Mystery solved.
My shell _expanded_ control sequences by default in echo. (echo "\1" -> becomes
"echo ^A").
Apparently there are literals in the configure script like "\\1" "\\2" that
were trying to echo a literal '\1' into a "sed" script. Instead it was
echoed in as a control-A.
Am I misremembering, aren't their systems were expanded echo is the default?
I also thought, though, that only "\nnn[n]" was expanded as a number -- with a
leading '0' required as the 1st digit. I'm guessing this might be an unreported
shell bug.
Anyway, worked around...
See, my shell was "purple", and it looked perfectly normal to me...:-)
Sigh,
Linda
