Re: ash word-splitting changes break shell scripts
On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 07:34:31AM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> Steve M. Robbins <steven.robbins@videotron.ca> wrote:
>
> > It is likely that the folks who wrote autoconf did not invent this
> > idiom for setting and re-setting $IFS. They probably borrowed the
> > idea from existing shell code, meaning that the "breakage", as you put
> > it, will be widespread indeed.
>
> Please read the code before commenting:
>
> It says:
>
> IFS="${IFS= }"; ac_save_ifs="$IFS"; IFS=":"
>
> If you don't mind me postulating, the first command is actually trying to
> assign a default value to IFS if it isn't set. This is actually better
> than what Zack Weinberg was trying to do, except that it has an incorrect
> default value.
Err, right. Sorry about that. I was thinking about the
"oIFS=$IFS ... IFS=$oIFS" sequence.
It is interesting that autoconf tries to set a default value of IFS.
That suggests that someone else has thought about the possibility that
IFS was not set. However, the fact that this default value is wrong,
suggests that the default setting may have never been triggered.
-S
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