Re: autoconf 2.61: AC_DEFINE variable with parenthesis

[Steven G. Johnson]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> That could well be, but it was never documented and it's not clear
> to me what the semantics would be.  Are arbitrary characters allowed
> in the macro name?  Surely not.

No, just things that are valid in cpp #defines.

> What happens if we have
> AC_DEFINE([NAME(x)], ...) followed by AC_DEFINE([NAME(y)], ...)
> followed by AC_DEFINE([NAME], ...)?

The same thing that happens if you do AC_DEFINE([NAME],[VAL1]) followed 
by AC_DEFINE([NAME],[VAL2]): the last definition encountered is the one 
used.

(Not that the case of multiple AC_DEFINEs is well documented even in the 
ordinary case of no-argument macros, so I'm not sure why you should 
single out the case here.)

> None of this stuff seems
> clear to me at all, with the old version.
>
> I'm open to having it be supported, but if so, these loose ends would
> need to be tied down, and the feature would need to be documented.
> (The hard part is probably the documentation....)

I think you're making it out to be more complicated than it is.  In the 
@defmac AC_DEFINE, in autoconf.tex, all we need to do is to add a single 
sentence, after the sentence "@var{variable} should be a C identifier 
that contains only letters, digits, and underscores," something like: 
"Using the same syntax as in C @samp{#define} macros, @var{variable} may 
also be suffixed with a parenthesized, comma-delimited argument list to 
define a preprocessor macro with arguments."

Steven