fix usage message again/

[chiark-utils.git] / cprogs / with-lock-ex.1

diff --git a/cprogs/with-lock-ex.1 b/cprogs/with-lock-ex.1
index ce3f87fd1b840f86a584e3727ff18588a5a214d1..3715cd8a76b503b2ba81464e1d2362c78582d578 100644 (file)
--- a/cprogs/with-lock-ex.1
+++ b/cprogs/with-lock-ex.1
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 with-lock-ex \- file locker
 .SH SYNOPSIS
 .B with-lock-ex
-.RB [\| \-w \||\| \-q \||\| \-f \|]
+.BR \-w \||\| \-q \||\| \-f
 .I lockfile command 
 .IR args \ \|.\|.\|.
 .br
@@ -21,14 +21,16 @@ for each user class for which the umask has
 .SH OPTIONS
 .TP
 .B \-w
-wait for the lock
+Wait for the lock to be available.
 .TP
 .B \-f
-fail if the lock cannot be acquired
+Fail (printing a message to stderr and exiting 255) if the lock cannot
+be acquired immediately because another process has it.
 .TP
 .B \-q
-silently do nothing (ie, exit 0 instead of executing the specified
-process) if the lock cannot be acquired
+Silently do nothing (ie, exit 0 instead of executing the specified
+process) if the lock cannot be acquired immediately because another
+process has it.
 .SH STALE LOCKS
 The locking protocol used does not suffer from stale locks.  If the
 lock cannot be acquired, one or more running processes must currently