Re: Fw: bug in texi2dvi, and hack patch

[Stepan Kasal]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 08:16:51PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > CVS Autoconf also tackled this issue, see
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2004-12/msg00057.html
...
> Unless I'm missing something, the above message from autoconf-patches
> does not solve this problem, since "test -f tex && test -x tex" will
> fail due to the absence of a file named literally `tex'.

(I wrote the above patch.)
The trick is that AC_CHECK_PROG contains the following code:

for ac_exec_ext in '' $ac_executable_extensions; do
  if AS_EXECUTABLE_P(["$as_dir/$ac_word$ac_exec_ext"]); then

thus we eventually get to

        test -f tex.exe && test -x tex.exe

which succeeds.

> Therefore, "test -x tex" was modified to check for
> `tex.exe' if `tex' does not exist.

Using `test -x' alone has always the danger that you encounter a directory.

Perhaps texi2dvi could use

        test -x tex && ! test -d tex

(Autoconf couldn't use this because of possible portability fears.)

Regards,
        Stepan