Re: function-local variables in ltmain

[Albert Chin]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 10:40:01AM +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Gary once mentioned a plan to emulate local variables in m4sh.
> (Or was it return values?  I can't find it now).
> 
> I have two ideas:
> 1) Since we do assume the shell has functions, can we maybe also assume
>    the shell has /some/ way of declaring local variables?
>    If so, the CONFIG_COMMANDS to generate `libtool' could put it in:
>      local   or
>      typeset
> 
>    Issue may arise if different semantics are employed by different
>    shells, e.g.: are local visible to functions called, how or whether
>    to access the global shadowing the local.
> 
>    Implicitly, branch-2-0 and HEAD already assume that the positional
>    parameters are function-local and restored after returning.
> 
> 
> 2) This looks somewhat ugly in the output, but to a certain extent, it
> is possible to emulate local variables with m4sh: see below.

Way ugly. Just seems to make libtool harder to maintain.

What's the point anyway? To keep function-specific variables from
being clobbered? Was this so much of a problem before libtool had
functions and everything was global? Seems like a solution looking for
a problem.

-- 
albert chin (address@hidden)