comma separated lists

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

AC_CHECK_HEADERS wants a whitespace separated list.
AC_CHECK_FUNCS wants a whitespace separated list.
AC_CHECK_DECLS wants a comma separated list.
AC_LIBSOURCES wants a comma separated list.

Why?! In m4 commas are used delimit things with different semantics, for
example the first and the second argument of a macro invocation, or the name
and the body of a macro. Whereas in m4 traditionally when things are
separated only by spaces you know that they will be treated the same way.

Such gratuitous syntactic unconsistencies make it harder to write autoconf
macros.

So I would suggest that you get back to the usual m4 syntax and change
AC_CHECK_DECLS and AC_LIBSOURCES to allow a whitespace separated list, and
no longer document that it also accepts a comma separated list.

Bruno