Bug 26789

Summary: plural of dwarf is dwarves
Product: Documentation Reporter: jmallett <jmallett>
Component: Books & ArticlesAssignee: freebsd-doc (Nobody) <doc>
Status: Closed FIXED    
Severity: Affects Only Me    
Priority: Normal    
Version: Latest   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   

Description jmallett 2001-04-23 06:40:00 UTC 
on http://www.freebsd.org/security/, the plural of dwarf is used as dwarfs, it should be dwarves

Fix: 

strcpy() and sprintf() calls from unbounded data. Use strncpy and snprintf() when the length is known (or implement some other form of bounds-checking when the length is unknown). In fact, never ever use gets() or sprintf(), period. If you do - we will send evil dwarves after you.
How-To-Repeat: strcpy() and sprintf() calls from unbounded data. Use strncpy and snprintf() when the length is known (or implement some other form of bounds-checking when the length is unknown). In fact, never ever use gets() or sprintf(), period. If you do - we will send evil dwarfs after you.
Comment 1 Gregory Sutter freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2001-04-23 07:08:51 UTC 
State Changed
From-To: open->closed

Both "dwarfs" and "dwarves" are now acceptable plurals for "dwarf", 
although "dwarfs" is without doubt the more proper.  Perhaps we should 
change it to "dwarrows" in honor of the master? 

A modern dictionary reference: 
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=dwarves 

From Lord of the Rings, Appendix F (II), On Translation: 
------ 
It may be observed that in this book as in The Hobbit the form dwarves 
is used, although the dictionaries tell us that the plural of dwarf is 
dwarfs.  It should be dwarrows (or dwerrows), if singular and plural 
had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose 
and geese.  But we no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a 
man, or even of a goose, and memories have not been fresh enough among 
Men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folk 
tales, where at least a shadow of truth is preserved, or at last to 
nonsense-stories in which they have become mere figures of fun. But in 
the Third Age something of their old character and power is still 
glimpsed, if already a little dimmed [...]  It is to mark this that I 
have ventured to use the form dwarves, and so to remove them a little, 
perhaps, from the sillier tales of these latter days.