Hi Branden, G. Branden Robinson wrote on Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 02:39:49AM -0400:
> commit 8ca88a9c72b59da7e8757b8f6012aef5947ef144 > Author: G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robin...@gmail.com> > AuthorDate: Sat Jul 24 12:17:32 2021 +1000 > > [nroff]: Improve portability. > > * src/roff/nroff/nroff.sh: Use Version 7 Unix sh-compatible form of > parameter expansion; per the GNU Autoconf manual[1], "[o]ld BSD > shells, including the Ultrix sh, don't accept the colon for any shell > substitution, and complain and die." This is also the form of such > substitutions used elsewhere in the script, so they should be mutually > consistent. > > [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.60/ > html_node/Shell-Substitutions.html I don't object to the code change, it does not really matter in this case. Arguably, groff=${GROFF_TEST_GROFF:-groff} is better than groff=${GROFF_TEST_GROFF-groff} because if GROFF_TEST_GROFF is defined but empty, POSIX specifies that the former results in groff=groff (which is more or less sane) while the latter results in groff="" (which is likely to cause very strange and confusing error messages). Then again, it doesn't really matter, no real-world user sets GROFF_TEST_GROFF in the first place. But if you care about portability, please stop reading the autoconf manual right now and start reading POSIX. The autoconf manual is a giant pile of totally outdated, irrelevant, and generally exceedingly bad advice. Following it usually spawns traditions of cargo cult programming and yields disgusting and hard-to-read code on top of that. In any case, please do not misuse the autoconf manual as a rationale for any code change. If you doubt my words, just go ahead and read any ./configure script produced by autoconf. Yours, Ingo [...] > diff --git a/src/roff/nroff/nroff.sh b/src/roff/nroff/nroff.sh > index 951ad14..6c8ae85 100644 > --- a/src/roff/nroff/nroff.sh > +++ b/src/roff/nroff/nroff.sh > @@ -156,8 +156,8 @@ opts="-mtty-char$opts" > @GROFF_BIN_PATH_SETUP@ > export GROFF_BIN_PATH > > -# Let the test cases redirect us. > -groff=${GROFF_TEST_GROFF:-groff} > +# Let our test harness redirect us. > +groff=${GROFF_TEST_GROFF-groff} > > # Note 1: It would be nice to apply the DRY ("Don't Repeat Yourself") > # principle here and store the entire command string to be executed into [...]
