Re: on SunOS "grep -e" fails

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Bob Friesenhahn wrote on Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 04:53:43PM CET:
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> >
> >>On SunOS grep, which is installed in /usr/bin, doesn't accept the option
> >>'-e'. But there is another grep installed on the system (in 
> >>/usr/xpg4/bin),
> >>which accept this option.
> >>
> >>Maybe it's possible to check if which grep accepts this option?
> >
> >That should already be done (i.e., the xpg4 version should be chosen
> >automagically).
> 
> The xpg4 version is not in the Solaris default path, therefore, it is 
> unlikely to be noticed by autoconf.

Well, new enough Autoconf checks for {,e,f}grep in /usr/xpg4/bin as
well, and checks for -e and acceptance of long lines.  But I failed to
see that this check is in 2.59b only, not 2.54.
(I checked this now on a Solaris machine :)

Is there an easy way to replace AC_PROG_EGREP with a better version in
libtool.m4 iff Autoconf's version is not good enough?
We can hardly force Libtool users to Autoconf 2.59b.

I don't think we can fix all calls to {,e,f}grep and $EGREP, because
some of the arguments are user input (but I only checked briefly).

Elmar wrote that a Libtool update fixed this, but I still think that
together with old Automake this failure could possibly show up
somewhere.

Regards,
Ralf