Re: [PATCH] Use expr where possible

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
  sorry for the delay.

On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 10:50:01PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> I don't see any problem in particular, but have you read the caveats about
> expr in the Autoconf manual?

I reviewed my patch from that perspective.  I don't use the exit code of
expr and all regexps used there should always match.
So the only potential problem is that the matched substring could be longer
than 120 chars.  There are two suspicious places:

1) $ac_top_builddir might be longer than 120 chars.

This would happen if the depth of the source tree is > 40.  Insane.

2) X$ac_file in _AC_CONFIG_SPLIT could be longer than 120 chars.

This would happen if AC_CONFIG_FOOS contained a ``tag'' which contained
a colon and which is longer than 120 chars.  Ie. something like
        Makefile:boiler/top.mk:boiler/bot.mk
but the whole string specifying the file and the templates would have to
be at least 120 chars long.
If the ``tag'' doesn't contain `:', there is no problem.
Again, I don't think this is a real limitation.

Please note that even if the source tree contains relative paths longer
then 120 chars, that doesn't mean that the package wouldn't have problems
on platforms with short-sighted expr.

To sum up, I think my patch is clean and can be commited.
(I ctreated a slight variation of the patch, please find it attached to
this post.)

Paul, OK to commit?

Stepan Kasal

autoconf-expr2.patch
Description: Text document