A bug report on the autoconf list recently reported that autoconf has been producing configure files for several years now with a dependence on tr[1] [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2008-10/msg00124.html The config.status for texinfo uses tr in one place, as far as I can see: expr "X$arg" : "X\\(.*\\)" | tr -d "$as_nl" Not for $as_cr as your message suggests. Is that a recent change? Are there other uses? Anyway, I am surprised that your experience is that tr is more portable than awk for this. I've never thought that \r and the like were portable across tr's, although I haven't made a study of it lately. If \r is not portable across awk's, how about \015? It is hard to imagine an awk that doesn't support that ... Adding tr for the sake of this one small task seems a bit troublesome to me, per Ralf's mail. Not that I'm saying no, but let's discuss ... karl _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf