Re: A small simplification

[Tim Van Holder]

Stepan Kasal wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> on a second thought, I think I was completely wrong here:
> 
> 
>>>>I guess we cannot have
>>>>    echo "             " >confdefs.h
>>>>because a smart editor might replace the spaces with tabs.
> 
> 
> Autoconf sources, configure and config.status contain whitespace
> which has to be preserved.  (The [<tab><space>]* regular expressions
> in config header sed scripts are an example.)
> 
> The confdefs.h initialization is not special.
> 
> Thus I believe there is no problem with the patch below.
> OK to commit?
> 
>  # AIX cpp loses on an empty file, so make sure it contains at least a 
> newline.
>  # NextStep 3.3 (patch 3) loses unless the first echo outputs at least 14 
> bytes.
> -ac_space=' '
> -echo 
> "$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space$ac_space"
>  >confdefs.h
> +echo "             " >confdefs.h

You may be right, but the comment says that the first echo needs to
output at least 14 bytes - if those spaces become tabs, it won't be 14
bytes of output anymore.
Maybe adding a "echo '12345678901234' >/dev/null" will resolve that
issue.