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[Bug-gnulib] Re: small suggestion for texi2dvi


From: Karl Berry
Subject: [Bug-gnulib] Re: small suggestion for texi2dvi
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 22:25:00 -0500

Hi Kurt,

            POSIX 1003.1-2001 no longer requires `egrep', but many older
         hosts do not yet support the POSIX replacement `grep -E'.

Yeah.  This is one of the things that I find unfathomable about recent
POSIX.  How can they possibly no longer require egrep and fgrep?  They
have been used in zillions of scripts for 25+ years.  I don't wish to
cater to their (IMHO) stupidity.

That said, there's no harm in your suggestion of
        egrep=${EGREP-egrep}
        fgrep=${FGREP-fgrep}
so I'll do that.  Thanks.

    [As an aside, the Autoconf docs also claim that ${VAR:-value} is not
    portable and one should use ${VAR-liternal} instead if possible...]

Yes.  Interestingly, it was an Autoconf maintainer (Akim) who put in a
number of those ${VAR:-value} expressions :).  I'm not sure if there's a
deep reason behind it.  (I kind of doubt it.)  Akim?  (Hey, and welcome
back.)

Thanks,
karl


Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 18:11:58 +0100
From: Kurt Hornik <address@hidden>
To: Karl Berry <address@hidden>
CC: Kurt Hornik <address@hidden>
Subject: small suggestion for texi2dvi

Karl,

Recent Autoconf docs say that

        POSIX 1003.1-2001 no longer requires `egrep', but many older
     hosts do not yet support the POSIX replacement `grep -E'.

and now provide two macros AC_PROG_EGREP and AC_PROG_FGREP.  Using the
results of these for substitution in texi2dvi is perhaps an overkill,
but perhaps you could use something like

        egrep=${EGREP-egrep}
        fgrep=${FGREP-fgrep}

and then use $egrep and $fgrep in

  echo "$command_line_filename" | egrep '^(/|[A-z]:/)' >/dev/null \
  elif sed 1q "$command_line_filename" | fgrep 'input texinfo' >/dev/null; then
    if fgrep "Rerun to get" "$filename_noext.log" >/dev/null 2>&1; then

???

[As an aside, the Autoconf docs also claim that ${VAR:-value} is not
portable and one should use ${VAR-liternal} instead if possible...]

Best
-k




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