Re: ./configure script prototype

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Joel Becker wrote:

On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 02:29:56PM +0100, Petr Baudis wrote:

quoted

Dear diary, on Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 01:18:52PM CET, I got a letter
where Andreas Ericsson [off-list ref] said that...

quoted

		--prefix=*)
			prefix=${1##*=}

	${i# and ${i% are POSIX, iirc.

They may be in POSIX, but they sure as h*ll aren't portable.

There's a _lot_ of machines out there that don't do POSIX, just because 
those "newfangled" things are so complicated.

Also, even in POSIX, there's tons of different substandards, and you might 
follow one but not the other. 

Finally, even if somebody is certified, they can very well be certified 
with "exceptions", so if they claim POSIX it doesn't necessarily mean that 
they follow all of it.

If you want to do a "configure" script (and I'm not sure it's worth it), 
you should cater to the lowest common denominator for it to be meaningful. 
What the hell that would be, I have no idea, since if you ever want to run 
on native Windows, it won't even be traditional shell. But traditional 
shell is at least a lot closer to that lowest common denominator than 
POSIX shell is.

That said, most of those ${var...} sequences definitely _are_ very 
traditional, and for all I know, ## may be too.

			Linus