Hi Collin,
> While learning m4/autoconf I seemed to forget about the importance of
> quoting variables (see a similar issue Paul fixed with my byteswap.m4
> changes)...
>
> In a testdir on an AIX machine (cfarm111) I see this warning:
>
> ./configure[7173]: test: argument expected
> ./configure[7181]: test: argument expected
>
> This is because the variables are not defined on this system and expand
> to nothing.
Indeed, in these cases you either
- need to make sure the variable has a value, regardless which 'if'
branch is taken, or
- use double-quotes.
> I've attached this patch fixing it.
The patch overshoots the goal. Namely, if one systematically uses double-quotes
for every variable access, it is harder to notice typos and copy&paste mistakes
(which are not unfrequent in Gnulib, because we have many idioms and copy
code from one .m4 file to another).
Therefore the better approach is to double-quote *only* the variables that
might be unset.
> or may be defined by the user
This is not a worthy consideration. Users are not meant to set *_cv_*
values to "" or "non sense", only to "yes" and "no" (or otherwise as
appropriate for the specific AC_CACHE_CHECK invocation).
Can you please revert the double-quotes for those two variables that
don't need it?
Bruno
