Ralf Wildenhues wrote, quoting me: >> I fixed it by moving the backticked expression outside of the >> outer quotes. > > Yes. Note that some more quotes are unnecessary here; this > MATCH="$MATCH"`echo --$OPT | $GREP "^$OPTNAME"` > > can safely be rewritten like this: > MATCH=$MATCH`echo --$OPT | $GREP "^$OPTNAME"` > > simply because the shell does not do word-splitting on the right > hand sides of assignments. Agreed, the double quotes here are redundant; but they are also harmless, and I happen to prefer the quoted form, in this case. > By the way, what about the other mentioned issue in above thread? > The > ./pdfroff: 561: Syntax error: "}" unexpected (expecting "fi") This has since been fixed too. > I do not have access to a system exposing this issue, but a wild > guess would be that the shell in question has trouble with this > construct: > "${foo+"set"}" Not such a wild guess; the problem was related to this, in a more complex construct: CS_FILTER="$STREAM $SED -n '/${DOT}${CS_MACRO-"CS"}/,\ /${DOT}${CE_MACRO-"CE"}/p'" Moving the default substitutions for CS_MACRO and CE_MACRO out of the expression, initialising them on a preceeding line on their own, was sufficient to eliminate the problem. Curiously, these similar constructs: IFS="${PATH_SEPARATOR-":"}" prog=':' and test "${SHOW_PROGRESS+"set"}" = "set" && SAY=echo didn't result in a similar problem, and I overlooked them when I applied the original correction. There haven't been any further bug reports in the eight months since, but it may still be wise to apply your patch proactively. Thanks. > BTW, in the patch [snipped], the > >> $REFFILE > looks problematic to me. What is it supposed to do? I've never encountered a shell which has trouble with this idiom for touching a file, leaving it unmodified if it already exists, or creating it (empty) if it doesn't; (even MS-DOS' command.com can handle it, in the form `>> %REFFILE%', in its .bat language). I won't change this, unless you can provide evidence of a specific arena in which it fails. Regards, Keith. _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf