Does adding an explanation in an edit make it "deviate from the intent"?

Question

I suggested an edit to a question after it was suggested in another comment when I added some explanatory discussion.

However, the edit got rejected on the grounds of changing the intent, although I only added braces to the code that make the syntax more clear and added one sentence about the semantics (search-replace-replacelength). Does that already "change the intent"? I'd rather not create a new answer basically quoting one sentence from the documentation, especially if it's an old and accepted answer and thus won't get much exposure so people would first see the accepted answer and still need to scroll through the others to find the explanation.

To me, the intent or idea of the answer is completely untouched, it helped me with my problem, I only added some background information about TeX that allows removing " unnecessary " brackets.

Answer 1

I think the rejection stemmed from

• Code change (which is often suspect) while keeping the original code as a viable "alternative" in the comment. Also, some people use abbreviated code forms, like \frac12 instead of \frac{1}{2} or \newcommand\mymacro without bracing arguments; and

• The additional description of what's going on which may have already been highlighted in the comments (and therefore already forms part of the post per se).

The above two elements, combined with the fact that it's an old post may have made the edit seem less important or unnecessary. Regardless, consistency and more detailed explanations have always been a welcome component of edits for me. For example, it would have been weird (or even confusing) if you had some bizarre mixture like the following:

\lstset{
  literate = 
    *::1
    {abc}{def}{3}
    g{hi}2
}

since the replacement components aren't clearly defined if you don't understand how TeX is consuming them.

I've updated the answer to reflect your suggested edit and promote consistency in interpretation.