Re: Possible bug in Makefile 3.81

[Eric Blake]

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According to Karl Berry on 11/6/2007 5:27 PM:

[adding autoconf, since the autoconf manual likes documenting these things]

>     Are there still Unixen for which [ is not portable?
> 
> Portability isn't the problem with [.  It's parsing.
> 
> [ -n "$x" ]
> 
> fails if x=] ... or did at one time anyway.  Sorry for lack of details,
> it's been too many years.
> 

I don't know if this is truly the case.  My understanding is that [ and
test have been synonyms for a long time, so that you should not have any
worries about interchanging them today on any practical porting target.
However, I do know that autoconf (and thus automake) prefers test over [,
primarily because test is less likely to mess up quoting rules in autoconf
macros.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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