Re: imperative vs. descriptive style

[Paul Eggert]

Bruno Haible wrote:

> The GNU Coding Standards [1] don't favour either, although I have vague
> memories that 20 years ago, it advocated imperative style.

Yes, I have the same vague memory, and still prefer imperative style in many 
cases. For routine use in comments, the imperative style is typically shorter 
and easier to understand. It's easier to read "Declare specific functions for X" 
than "This file declares specific functions for X", for example, and the longer 
wording does not convey enough extra information to justify its extra length.

For specs that must contain qualifiers like "shall" or "should", the imperative 
style does not work well, and that's a good reason for POSIX and other 
more-abstract specifications to not use it.

One other beef I often have with comments (including some that I write!) is that 
they are not sentences. At least this guideline *is* in the GNU Coding Standards.