I'm curious why the macros AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS and AC_SUBST take differing arguments to work? In this snippet # find all subdirectories that will have source code and therefore libraries. # add the subdirs for configuration and the libary to the superlibrary for FILE in `ls -d */` do case "$FILE" in autom4te* ) continue ;; # m4*) continue ;; # * ) SRC_SUBDIRS+=" $FILE" LIB_LIBSRC+="lib${FILE:0:-1}.la " esac done AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([${SRC_SUBDIRS}]) AC_SUBST(SRC_SUBDIRS) I could get them both to work but only in these differing ways. Trust me, I tried them all. Can someone please explain - succinctly - why this is so? Thanks, Dave D.R. Erickson Defence Research and Development Canada Suffield | Recherche et développement pour la défense Canada Suffield Medicine Hat, AB, Canada T1A 8K6 David.Erickson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Telephone |Téléphone 403-544-4048 / Facsimile | Télécopieur 403-544-4701 Government of Canada | Gouvernement du Canada _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf