[bug #64061] pdfpic.tmac uses sed badly and non-portably

[G. Branden Robinson]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #64061 (project groff):


[comment #1 comment #1:]
> [comment #0 original submission:]
> > 2.  It uses the sequence '\n' in the replacement part of a sed
> > 's' command.  This is non-standard and undefined on some seds.
> 
> I raised this as a side note in
[http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58206#comment11 comment 11 of bug 58206], but
once that bug's primary issue was addressed, I didn't follow up on this point.
 So I apologize for dropping the ball there.

It's okay.  It turns out that the side note was misleading.  But you could be
forgive to draw the conclusion you did; I think almost anyone would.  There's
deviltry afoot, but I now have a cast of the offending hoofprint.

> Some of the email threads linked elsewhere in that bug report point out the
redundancy of the grep command, and offer other ways to skin that cat, such as
an awk equivalent of the sed (which may or may not be more portable).

Awk is also notorious for its number of dialects, and requires Autoconf
checks.

sed is practically always available and as far as I know there _is_ a portable
dialect of it that is still feature-complete as far as POSIX goes--you just
have to be insanely careful.  Often this seems to mean breaking lines at every
opportunity.


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