On Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:08:39 +0300 Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost> wrote: > Please, can a native speaker massage the text for `oflag`: > > The default value is creat, which must be explicitly added in oflag > if this option is used in order to output to a nonexistent file > > It is just too damn confusing to parse right on the first try. Spare > a thought for the proverbial despearate sysadmin fixing an emergency > at 3am. > > The porblem, I guess is that the man page seems to be using "operand" > for `foo=...` and "option" for values in the "..." part of an operand > and here "this option" seems to refer to oflag= (and should be "this > operand"), not to the "creat" (the only possible referent for "this" > if "option" in "this option" is read consistently with the rest of the > manpage). How about: "The default value is creat. If the oflag operand is used, the creat flag must be included explicitly when writing output to a nonexistent file." -- IDL