Re: PATCH: eliminate backtick substitution

[Karl Berry]

    Solaris 10

Well, it is true that Solaris 10 /bin/sh does not understand $(...).

    "Configure scripts will automatically locate a shell that supports

Yes, I saw that too. Which is fine for autoconf's configure scripts (and
I'm very glad they're doing it), but what about when config.{guess,sub}
are executed from something other than autoconf-generated configure
scripts? Autoconf is not the whole world, by a long shot.

    https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/082

Thanks for the pointer. I remain completely unconvinced.  The various
points are merely described as things like
"non-obvious ... convenient ... nicer ..."  In other words, there is no
technical reason to force out `...` for $(...), just cosmetic reasons.
Sure, I wouldn't recommend `...` in a primer for shell programming, but
config.* is hardly that.

It is perfectly possible to use `...` correctly and portably, and an
awful lot of work has gone into doing so. I don't know of any problems
with the use of `...` in config.* (or autoconf for that matter). For
something as fundamental as config.*, the switch seems a bad idea to me.
FWIW ...

I doubt it's an inviting prospect for config.* to also try to find and
re-execute with a good shell, though that's another option.

Thanks for considering,
Karl