Re: 16-numeric-args.patch

[Akim Demaille]

| Arghh... confused.  Have you developed schizophrenia, Akim? :-)

Hm, maybe just alcohol :)

| On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 05:56:51PM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
| > >>>>> "akim" == akim  <address@hidden> writes:
| > 
| > akim> On Sat, Oct 13, 2001 at 04:10:53PM +0100, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
| > >> so presumably that code has already stripped unquoted leading
| > >> spaces by the time the builtin receives its argv?
| > 
| > akim> No, this is different.  Think of eval([ 1 + 1]).
| > 
| > Of course not.  Rather, divert([  1 ]).  Dead wrong to my eyes.

I was just pointing out that I precisely chose to refer to a builtin
that does not use a numeric argument, since it parses it :)  But
divert, m4exit etc. are better examples.

| > >> I think we are in agreement here, that normal m4 whitespace rules
| > >> should apply to numeric arguments.  I am slightly worried about old
| > >> code that relies on this "feature" though... perhaps Rene wrote it
| > >> this way for compatibility with vendor M4?
| > 
| > akim> This is dead broken, extremely bad, puke!  Never ever put
| > akim> features for novices which can make it harder for real hard core
| > akim> programmers.  M4 programmers are aware of the rules, and having
| > akim> an exception is a means to have unwanted phenomenons remain
| > akim> hidden.
| > 
| > akim> I really don't want soft corners.  But that's my HO.
| > 
| > So?

And here, I was trying to say that I am really waiting for an
approval, and no disapproval ;)

Letting things like divert([  1 ]) happen is dangerous IMHO.  But
OTOH, you are right, at least on NetBSD, spaces are ignored.  But we
are not expected to reproduce bugs, are we?

%m4
m4exit(`   12    ')
%echo $?
12
%uname -a
NetBSD yar 1.5.1 NetBSD 1.5.1 (EPITA 20010722 std du) #22: Sat Sep  8 17:13:43 
GMT 2001     address@hidden:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/RN i386
%what /usr/bin/m4
/usr/bin/m4: Permission denied

(Yeah, the guys here are so paranoid that they remove the read access
to executables.  How painful.

%ls -l /usr/bin/m4
-r-x--x--x  1 root  wheel  17852 Nov 17  2000 /usr/bin/m4
)