Re: 05no-escape-on-AT_CHECK-strings

[Derek Robert Price]

Akim Demaille wrote:

> | Akim Demaille wrote:
> | > Derek> Akim Demaille wrote:
> | > >> I am absolutely against this patch.  Revert it.
> | > >> >> If you want something like this, you will first need to
> | > explain it.
> | > >> Derek> Again, CVS's current test suite often compares program
> | > output against
> | > Derek> shell variables defined earlier in the script.
> | >
> | >Then save these values in an expout file, and use [expout] as STDOUT
> | >value.
> | >
> | 
> | The CVS test suite uses this almost every test.  I could implement
> | this as an m4 macro in the CVS test suite, but had thought it had some
> | more general usefulness.  How would you feel about an extra macro,
> | perhaps AT_CHECK_NOESCAPE or the like which ran AT_CHECK to expout
> | then allowed shell expansion on the args before comparison?
>
> This, why not.

Ok.  Patch will follow.

> | I also wanted to implement an AT_CHECK_EXPR (now AT_CHECK_EXPR &
> | AT_CHECK_EXPR_NOESCAPE?) which used expr rather than diff to compare
> | the strings. 
>
> expr suffers from severe limitations, including portability issues.

Hrm, yeah.  I was thinking the CVS test suite dealt with expr fine, but 
I just looked and realized that part of the way it deals is by 
gracefully detecting the problem with expr and telling the user that the 
test suite isn't going to run until they replace expr.  There are a few 
cases where CVS substs env vars with values for literal `+', `?', end of 
line anchor, and a variant of `.*' which will match a newline across 
platforms, and it does search the path until it finds an expr which 
looks like GNU expr if it finds a broken expr, but it just gives up on 
some platforms when it finds a broken expr and no GNU expr.

> | One example of where this is useful with CVS is in that
> | CVS's includes dates in much of its output.  Since these dates change
> | depending on when the test is run, CVS's test suite often uses
> | ${DATE}, which expands to a regexp which will match the date format
> | though no particular date, to match dates in tests where the date is
> | not the central issue being tested.
>
> This is where I suggest a wrapper that smashes these differences.
>  

Hrm.  What sort of wrapper are you suggesting?  sed'ing the differences 
into an empty string or some literal?  Did you have something else in 
mind?  You probably have a better idea of what will be portable than I do.

Derek

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