Re: autoconf 2.61: AC_DEFINE variable with parenthesis

[Paul Eggert]

"Steven G. Johnson" <address@hidden> writes:

> (In fact, I believe I'm the one who originally patched autoconf to
> support macro arguments in AC_DEFINE.)

That could well be, but it was never documented and it's not clear
to me what the semantics would be.  Are arbitrary characters allowed
in the macro name?  Surely not.  What happens if we have
AC_DEFINE([NAME(x)], ...) followed by AC_DEFINE([NAME(y)], ...)
followed by AC_DEFINE([NAME], ...)?  None of this stuff seems
clear to me at all, with the old version.

I'm open to having it be supported, but if so, these loose ends would
need to be tied down, and the feature would need to be documented.
(The hard part is probably the documentation....)