Subversion Book Typo

[C. Michael Pilato]

Tabish Mustufa wrote:
> The last sentence of the first paragraph after
> the subsection title reads:
> 
> This section is specific to Berkeley DB; FSFS repositories have no
> extra data that be cleaned up or reclaimed.
> 
> I think it ought to read:
> 
> This section is specific to Berkeley DB; FSFS repositories have no
> extra data that *needs to* be cleaned up or reclaimed.

As odd as it might sound, the grammar is correct.  "Data" is the plural 
form of the word "datum".  If you replace in that sentence the plural 
word "data" with, say, another plural -- "bits of information" -- your 
ears are happier, right?  :-)

Still, I'd be quite happy to have that sentence reworded to avoid that 
oddity (such things can cause mental trip-ups to readers, which is not 
really the goal here).  Also, I'd like to lose that semicolon in favor 
of an emdash per the style used throughout the rest of the book, and 
because when trying to apply the old rule "a semicolon replaces a 
conjunction-and-comma", I can't come up with a conjunction that really 
works well.

-- 
C. Michael Pilato <cmpilato at red-bean.com>

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has
  been found difficult; and left untried."  -- G. K. Chesterton