Re: To non-native English writers: expunging the solecism "This allows to do something."

[Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>]

On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:51:56 +0000 Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 11:54:04PM +0100, Stephen Berman wrote:
>
>> You missed some instances, which I found by running rgrep on the Emacs
>> source tree with this regexp (without the quotes):
>
>> "[^-]\(allow\|enable\|permit\|prevent\|require\)[^-de ]* to "
>
> Yes, I'd overlooked "require"; but there are instances of "requires to"
> which are OK.  The regexp I ended up using was:
>
>     '\b\(require\|allow\|prevent\|permit\|enable\)s\? to\b'

Ah, this is better than mine in that it also find cases where the verb
is at bol or "to" at eol; yet ...

> , and some fancy playing around with -A1 and -B1 flags to grep to find
> instances (and there were a few) where the verb is at the end of a line
> and the "to" at the beginning of the next line (modulo comment markers,
> etc.).
>
>> This does, however, also return several false positives, most of them
>> with "require" (one is written as `require' and one or two of the others
>> should probably be quoted like that).  I don't have time in the next few
>> days to commit a fix for these, so if you do, please go ahead.
>
> Well, I've knocked down quite a few more instances.  I can't guarantee
> there're none left, of course, but there aren't many.

... your regexp misses cases of "allowing to", "requiring to", which
there are a handful of (and I didn't try using -A1 and -B1):

./etc/ORG-NEWS:1602:     =org-attach-method= now supports a new method =lns=, allowing to
./lisp/ruler-mode.el:122:Also allowing to visually change `tab-stop-list' setting using
./lisp/org/ox.el:3470:;; `org-export-with-backend' is a function allowing to locally use
./lisp/org/ChangeLog.1:10415:	(org-element--current-element): Fix bug requiring to parse a quote
./lisp/org/ChangeLog.1:14844:	Check `org-protected' property before allowing to match a footnote.
./lisp/org/ChangeLog.1:17233:	(org-re-property): New function allowing to build a regexp to
./doc/lispref/text.texi:1376:allowing to undo them as a group.  By default, commands
./doc/lispref/markers.texi:343:Most functions that create markers, without an argument allowing to
./doc/emacs/frames.texi:1013:with the mouse, thus allowing to easily resize adjacent windows.

I think that's it (don't worry, I won't try looking for more ;-).

Steve Berman