Re: libtool generates temporary wrappers with improperly escaped LD_LIBRARY_PATH

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Brandon,

thanks for the report.

* Brandon Philips wrote on Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 06:32:15AM CET:
> 
> I have found that libtool generates temporary wrappers with improperly
> escaped LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If the current directory path contains a colon.
> For example /home/philips/test:directory/attr-2.4.43/

Where is it documented that LD_LIBRARY_PATH is interpreted as with
backslash escaping for colons in the names?  I've never heard of that
before.

The ld.so(1) man page on my Debian testing system documents that
LD_LIBRARY_PATH is interpreted similarly to PATH.  I confirmed now that
PATH uses this kind of colon escaping, surprisingly.  I cannot find it
documented anywhere though, certainly not in the Posix pages (but hey,
I overlooked things before).

We can think about supporting it when and where this is suitably safe to
do so, but my gut reaction would be "don't do it when it hurts".

Cheers,
Ralf