Bug 199644

Summary: getopt_long(3) manpage has unclear example
Product: Documentation Reporter: Patrick Lauer <patrick>
Component: Manual PagesAssignee: Mateusz Piotrowski <0mp>
Status: Closed Works As Intended    
Severity: Affects Some People CC: 0mp, doc
Priority: ---    
Version: Latest   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   

Description Patrick Lauer 2015-04-23 12:37:26 UTC 
Minor cosmetic detail - 

getopt_long(3) manpage says:
(see for example https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=getopt_long&apropos=0&sektion=3&manpath=FreeBSD+11-current&arch=default&format=html )


"The last element of the longopts array has to be filled with zeroes."

and the example just below is written as:

"{ NULL,	     0,			     NULL,	     0 }"


While this accidentally works out it is confusing to read. The manpage of GNU getopt_long shows "{ 0, 0, 0, 0 }" for this example, which matches the text a lot better.
Comment 1 Mateusz Piotrowski freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2019-09-22 13:01:53 UTC 
I believe that since the struct members are pointers in this case, NULL might actually be better.