Bug in AC_LIBOBJ, and autoconf 2.59

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

Hi,

There is a small problem with the AC_LIBOBJ function in autoconf, take
the following snippet, and give it to autoconf.

,----[ configure.ac ]
| AC_INIT
| AC_LIBOBJ(qux)
`----

This will produce the following code:

,----
| case $LIBOBJS in
|     "qux.$ac_objext"   | \
|   *" qux.$ac_objext"   | \
|     "qux.$ac_objext "* | \
|   *" qux.$ac_objext "* ) ;;
|   *) LIBOBJS="$LIBOBJS qux.$ac_objext" ;;
| esac
`----

Which in turn can produce the following:

,----
| ./configure: line 1221: syntax error near unexpected token `"*'
| ./configure: line 1221: `  *" qux.$ac_objext "*'
`----

What is the point of the spaces? They don't seem to serve any useful
purpose; and infact seem to be invalid shell script code.

A possible fix would be to remove those spaces in the definition of
AC_LIBOBJ (well, _AC_LIBOBJ).  But I am not sure if those spaces
really do have a meaning or not, and if they do then removing them
might cause weird things.

Cheers.