On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Peter Breitenlohner <peb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Everything else is philosophy/ideology. I thought concluding content from file name was MS-DOS style (because MS-DOS had no /bin/file and big use of pipes), but it seems several un*x tools also per default assume content based on files names, which in practice makes things easier to use, such as in case of compiling and linking .c, .a and .o. > > Well, I presume your C-sources are named *.jpg? > > Certainly not I doubt that next C language specification will attempt to rename the extension of `.c' files to let's say `.isoc', but even if so, I would expect major compilers would support `.c' too, as fortunately autoconf is doing. (please note, I never said calling `configure.ac' would be wrong or bad or anything. It is fine! I just tried to understand the implications and potential issues with using an old deprecated name to be able to evaluate those disadvantages against the others. As soon and they overweight, we'll rename `configure.in' files.). C-sources named `*.jpg' won't work with major compilers: steffen@h # gcc c.jpg c.jpg: file not recognized: File format not recognized collect2: ld returned 1 exit status steffen@h # tcc c.jpg Error: type of 'c.jpg' unknown (file ignored) steffen@h # CL.EXE c.jpg Befehlszeilenwarnung D4024 : Typ der Quelldatei 'c.jpg' nicht erkannt, Objektdatei wird angenommen [...] c.jpg : fatal error LNK1136: Ungueltige oder beschaedigte Datei steffen@desupr-dev:/local/tmp/steffen_exp/tsade_sys.all # file c.jpg c.jpg: ASCII C program text but with gcc there is `-x' (and similarily, CL.EXE has `/TC'): steffen@h # gcc -x c c.jpg steffen@h # ./a.out Hello, world steffen@h # echo 'print "Hello, world!\n";' > perl.jpg steffen@h # perl perl.jpg Hello, world! BTW, a.out also is a backward-compatible example: steffen@h # file a.out a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable [...] :-) oki, Steffen _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
