Re: autoconf doesn't support spaces in directory names

[Paul Brannan]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> The problem with fixing the quoting of $am_aux_dir is that I don't know
> of a possible quoting that will work in all cases where the variable is
> used (in a Makefile, in some shell scripts).  It's really a mess.

The quoting I used was this:

test x"${MISSING+set}" = xset || MISSING="\${SHELL} \"$am_aux_dir\"/missing"

install_sh=${install_sh-"\$(SHELL) \"$am_aux_dir\"/install-sh"}

which seemed to work for me, though I guess I missed the quoting of 
$ac_aux_dir on the previous line:

am_aux_dir=`cd $ac_aux_dir && pwd`

so maybe I wasn't getting the behavior I thought I was getting.

I'm curious which cases this quoting won't work.

> > but is a known problem with all released versions of
> > autotools, and is likely to be a problem with various packages even when
> > newer autotools are available.  The workaround is to avoid directory names
> > with spaces.
>
> Yes, the workaround is good.

I agree.  Spaces in directory/file names are as evil as case-insensitive 
file systems.  I'd rather not have to explain this to users, however.

Paul