Re: echo vs. printf regression (darwin8)

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 08/15/2010 09:05 PM, David Fang wrote:
> > On 08/15/2010 06:59 PM, David Fang wrote:
> > > The ECHO that is chosen by autoconf on darwin8 (printf %s\n) is buggy:
> > >
> > > fangism % printf %s\n foo
> > > foonfangism% printf '%s\n' foo
> > > foo
> > >
> > > Must be due to the version of the Bourne shell (2.05b).
> > > Failure is similar with sh-3.2.
> > > The 'correct' value of ECHO should be printf '%s\n' (note the extra
> > > single quote protection).
> > > I don't know yet whether that is forward-compatible with newer versions
> > > of Bourne shell.
> > >
> > > Don't recall which version of autoconf broke this, betweem 2.63 and
> > > latest.
> >
> > The problem seems to be in the way that "printf '%s\n'" is assigned to
> > as_echo.
>
> I've tried to hack config.status with quote-protections and escapes:
>
> ECHO='printf "%s\n"'
> ECHO='printf %s\\n'
>
> (and tried hacking the generated 'configure')
>
> But the substitution process (uses some creative sed magic) during
> AC_OUTPUT keeps destroying the result.

Yes, the problem is in how $ECHO is then "unquoted" by the shell.  We 
should really use a shell function for echo (and printf for echo -n) 
instead.

Paolo