On 3/9/21 11:09 AM, Karl Berry wrote:
I fully disagree. (Along with, it seems, everyone else except
you and Ben.)
Ben is the main person to convince here, since he's the maintainer.
I am a bit disenheartened to see that Ben hasn't sent any email to this
list since he installed the change in question, back in November. If
he's retired (which I hope not), we'll need to find a new maintainer
whose lap we can dump this problem into. I'll cc this email to him to
give him a heads-up about the thread.
1) There is no actual benefit to using $(...) over `...`.
I disagree with that statement on technical grounds (not merely cosmetic
grounds), as I've run into real problems in using `...` along with " and
\, problems that I would not have run into with $(...). The Autoconf
manual describes some of these problems.[1]
Talking about # as an analogy is a red herring. # does not cause
real-life problem.
# caused a real-life problem for me on a real-life system, around 1979.
Of course the problem set has changed since then, but the compatibility
principle hasn't.
[1]
https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.70/html_node/Shell-Substitutions.html
