> Why? Because in the first instance, m4 has to parse the big long string to > find the appropriate closing ], on every use of the macro, even though it > will > only be expanding the AC_REQUIRE_SHELL_FN once. In the second instance, the > AC_REQUIRE line takes much less effort to parse than the full-blown shell > definition. > > Yes, this probably means refactoring your entire series to use this idea, but > hopefully it proves to make autoconf even faster.
My first version was like that. However it's complicated by the fact that foo_fn would need to be invoked with a language argument (that's the m4_require_with_args message I posted on [EMAIL PROTECTED]). So, for now it's easier to have the version that inherently slower, but in practice still faster than what we have now. Paolo
