Re: automatic setting of srcdir

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Lars" == Lars J Aas <address@hidden> writes:

Lars> Sure, but useless quotes are better than missing quotes.  I
Lars> haven't studied the Bourne shell syntax that hard, and given all
Lars> the variations over how the so-called Bourne shell compatible
Lars> shells behave, I've taken the better safe than sorry approach to
Lars> sh scripting.

Yes and no.  Your reason is correct, but as a corollary it will push
you toward nonportable constructs.  For instance your

absolute="`cd "$relative" && pwd`"

is not portable, and nor is

absolute="`cd \"$relative\" && pwd`"

while

absolute=`cd "$relative" && pwd`

is.  Overquoting has its problems too.

You don't have to quote rhs of assignments, nor the case argument

case `echo there are spaces in there` in
  "there are"*there ) echo OK;;
  *) echo 'Niah???';;
esac