Hi Stepan, * Stepan Kasal wrote on Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 06:22:42PM CEST: > On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 05:53:40PM +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote: > > > I think we should tell them at some stage, it can save them some typing. > > > > Is saving on typing the only reason? Let's use short, unreadable > > variable names! :-> > > > > No, seriously, for one bugreport less I'd happily type lots of quotes. > > *You* would perhaps type the quotes happily; but we are talking about > saving *their* typing. Every Autoconf user would have to type more [ ] > if we don't tell him about the trick. ;-)
OK, agreed. > > My editor also makes reading them easy, YMMV though. > > <flame> > Files should be easily readable as they are, without special tools to display > them. That's why I love text config files, and why I don't think XML is the > best for human-written files. > </flame> I heartily agree here. :-) > > A definition (if possible) would be nice. This is a guess of mine: > > > > Simple text is text composed of the characters isprint(3) recognizes, > > but not including brackets, comma, dollar, and words that constitute > > defined macro names, m4 commands. Within pure Autoconf we guarantee > > macros to be all uppercase matching > > _?A[CST]_.* > > and m4 commands all match > > m4_.* > > in regex(7) notation. > > No, there are 27 m4 builtins which are also available without the m4_ > prefix. See ./lib/autoconf/autoconf.m4 in the autoconf source. As I said, it was a guess. Maybe those 27 builtins could be listed as well? > > > Shall we teach the users to quote all shell code which is outside of any > > > macros? I don't think so. > > > > I tend to disagree slightly here. > > You mean: > > [if test "x$with_zlib" != xno; then > with_zlib=no] > AC_CHECK_HEADER(zlib.h, [AC_CHECK_LIB(z, gzread, [with_zlib=yes])]) > [fi > if test "$with_zlib" = no; then] > AC_MSG_ERROR([*** zlib is required]) > [fi] > > I think it wouldn't be nice to do this to our beloved users. Hehe. You are right, that is what I meant. I agree it's not nice, though. > Life ain't easy. Even computers are not able to make it so. ;-) Famous last words. Cheers, and thanks for your comments, Ralf
