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Definition of alphanumeric?



Hi,

policy uses alphanumeric to define version numbers. Is this only a-zA-Z0-9,
or does this include the "_"? As the "_" is used as a seperator in Debian
package file names, this would be perverse, but I would like to stay on the
safe side.

Background: I use the version number as a directory name in the autobuilder.
Unfortunately, make doesn't cope with unquoted colons `:' (epochs!) in target
file names, and some packages use something like

PWD=`pwd`

and use that in rules. If pwd contains a `:', the build breaks (happened
with current gawk).

There are other characters which must be avoided in the path where you build
the packages (like `%'). I want to work around it by replacing the colon
with an underscore, or if this is a valid character of a version string,
with a comma. If you think that packages should cope with arbitrary parent
paths at build time, I would support such a proposal, but I have no time to
work the details out myself.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de



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