Re: Libtool and echo (Was: bison-1.29c 'configure' problems on Solaris 8)

[Gary V. Vaughan]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 11:07:29AM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
> >>>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden> Date: 04 Oct 2001 17:38:43
> >> +0200
> >> 
> >> some of our parts would be extremely happy to have as good a shell
> >> as possible.  For instance it would help Libtool which needs a good
> >> `echo'.
> 
> Paul> Could you give more details about this?  What 'echo' features
> Paul> does Libtool need, other than those features standardized by
> Paul> POSIX?
> 
> This I won't be able to answer correctly, Libtool people should know
> better than I do.

>From libtool.m4:

  # The Solaris, AIX, and Digital Unix default echo programs unquote
  # backslashes.  This makes it impossible to quote backslashes using
  #   echo "$something" | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g'

libtool needs to store lots of script snippets in shell variables to
be passed to eval later.  In order for this to work, it must be
possible to backslash escape shell meta characters, so that eval's
behaviour is predictable.

Cheers,
        Gary.
-- 
  ())_. Gary V. Vaughan     gary@(oranda.demon.co.uk|gnu.org)
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