Re: changequote

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Mirar" == Mirar  <address@hidden> writes:

Mirar> Since m4 environment will not let you change the environment
Mirar> (changequote) if you need to use quoting in macros, I think
Mirar> this was a good idea. I think major the design miss was to use
Mirar> m4 in the first place, since it doesn't work well in
Mirar> API-to-black-box environments.

This is a very common bizarre viewpoint.  I see no relationship with
M4 at all.  You need some escaping mechanism, you just nice a
nanosecond thinking to know that.  Now you have the choice: escapes or
quotes.  Or some no `program in the text body' environment, such as
AutoGen.

I think that since we sort of extend Sh it's quite logic to have a
`program in the text body' approach.  But you are right, the fact that
we are on top of M4 is just an internal detail.

NOw, would you ever criticize C and most languages because you have to
escape double quotes inside strings?

Of course we need quotes.

Mirar> Yes, but what you will lose is two things: autoconf is no
Mirar> longer m4, and it's no longer backwards compatible with older
Mirar> autoconfs. May I suggest that the verison is bumped to autoconf
Mirar> 3 to avoid this confusion in the future?

Yes you may, but it will be 2.50.  The fact that broken configure.in
no longer work is no surprise, and it could have happened in 2.15.