Re: AS_SET_UNEXPANDED_ARGS proposal

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 12:26:54PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > 2005-08-24  Stepan Kasal  <address@hidden>
> >     * lib/autoconf/general.m4 (_AC_CANONICAL_SPLIT): Simplify; rejecting
> >     some evil values and relying on the fact that $* concatenates the
> >     parameters by the first character from IFS.
> 
> That looks good; please install.

done.

Regarding this:

>   if (set -f) 2>/dev/null; then
>     ac_do_noglob='set -f'
>     ac_do_glob='set +f'
>   else
>     ac_do_noglob=
>     ac_do_glob=
>   fi
>      
>   ac_save_IFS=$IFS
>   IFS='-'
>   $ac_do_noglob
>   set x $something; shift
>   $ac_do_glob
>   IFS=$ac_save_IFS
> 
> This should be done almost everywhere that there is a 'set' command
> with args.  Perhaps m4sh needs an AS_SET_UNEXPANDED_ARGS macro, or

It sounds good.  But I think AS_SET_ARGS is a better name.

Moreover, I see no point in that "push" of IFS.
(If we encounter a situation where one such push is inside another one,
they would probably both use ac_save_IFS anyway...)

I think that m4sh should define as_default_IFS.  Then we could do

# AS_SET_ARGS(ARGS, [IFS-VALUE])
# ------------------------------
# Calls `set' to set args, temporarily disabling pathname expansion
# (if the shell supports it).  If IFS-VALUE is given, IFS is temporarily
# changed to it.
#
m4_define([AS_SET_ARGS],
[m4_ifval([$2], [IFS='$2'; ])dnl
$ac_do_noglob; set x $something; shift; $ac_do_glob[]dnl
m4_ifval([$2], [; IFS=$as_default_IFS])[]dnl
])

Would you agree with this?

Have a nice day,
        Stepan Kasal