On Saturday 18 August 2001 10:24 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Something like AC_MSG_RESULT(@""@) outputs @\"\"@, not @""@. So the
> quadrigraph is not recognized, and not replaced. I'm not in favor of
> also replacing @\"\"@, but just because it frightens me a bit. If someone
> is convinced this is OK, then I'm OK.
>
> So we are looking for specially non special characters. @__@?
I think you are right to worry about escaped @\"\"@, since if you also
replace that, Murphy's Law tells us to expect to find another layer where the
whole thing is escaped again, or something.
But then, I wonder why you bother to `smash' anyway? Recently I've taken to
not using dnl for things like:
AC_REQUIRE([AC_PROG_CC])dnl
Why is it there at all? Just to save a blank line in configure.
Obfuscating the source seems like a bad way to make the machine readable
output prettier. Who cares if the machine readable parts are ugly? Well,
obviously you and I do, and perhaps a few dozen others who read through it
while we develop complicated code generation macros, but I don't think we
should make the user interface for the thousands of casual users less
friendly for the sake of ourselves.
I vote for dropping line smashing altogether. If I'm irritated by huge
blocks of whitespace when reading the generated code, I do like I do when cpp
macros go awry:
gcc -E -DHAVE_CONFIG -I. -I.. hello.c | sed 's/^[ ]*$//' | less -s
> Another possibility would be sort of autom4te pragma lines
>
> #smash: off
> some
>
>
> multiple
>
>
> empty lines
> #smash: on
Eeew!
I really think that leaving the blanks in is the right solution.
Cheers,
Gary.
--
())_. Gary V. Vaughan gary@(oranda.demon.co.uk|gnu.org)
( '/ Research Scientist http://www.oranda.demon.co.uk ,_())____
/ )= GNU Hacker http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool \' `&
`(_~)_ Tech' Author http://sources.redhat.com/autobook =`---d__/
