Hi Albert, * Albert Chin wrote on Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 09:56:43PM CEST: > On Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 10:40:01AM +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote: > > Gary once mentioned a plan to emulate local variables in m4sh.
> > 2) This looks somewhat ugly in the output, but to a certain extent, it > > is possible to emulate local variables with m4sh: see below. > > Way ugly. Yep. > Just seems to make libtool harder to maintain. I don't know. > What's the point anyway? To keep function-specific variables from > being clobbered? Was this so much of a problem before libtool had > functions and everything was global? Seems like a solution looking for > a problem. Well, I would like to modularize it more. I am pretty sure it can be made shorter and easier to understand that way. (See func_execute_cmds or func_source for example). For this, all-global variables are a problem to some extent. Just look at two examples: func_extract_archives uses variables named my_*. This is not safe: both its caller and any functions it may call itself may overwrite these accidentally. func_extract_an_archive OTOH uses safe names f_ex_an_ar_*, but is ugly to the point of being unreadable. I do _not_ want to eliminate use of globals. All I want is an easier method for ensuring this than regular grepping of the whole script. I'm certainly not determined to use this particular idea. Cheers, Ralf
