Re: Autoconf "languages" (was: AC_FOREACH public?)

[Keith MARSHALL]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote, quoting me:
>> Why would anyone want to do so anyway?  If I want to write a shell
>> script, other than as a configure script, it's *much* more logical
>> and convenient for me to just write directly as such, in the shell's
>> own native language.
>
> Those who don't use M4SH_INIT are doomed to reinvent it, painfully.

Oh yeah?  And M4SH_INIT is sooooo well documented, that everyone will
rush to use it!

Granted, these considerations will extend beyond autoconf, into the
other autotools, but the point I was trying to make is that, for
everyday shell scripting needs, using m4 to generate the script is
just more trouble than it's worth.  Consider the pdfroff script in
groff:

http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/groff/groff/contrib/pdfmark/pdfroff.sh?rev=1.7&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

That was written from scratch, with nary a sniff of m4, and it runs
portably, on a wide variety of platforms.

Regards,
Keith.