2006.04.03 14:33 "Re: [Tiff] configure in tiff-3.8.2 cannot deal with path with spaces", by Bob Friesenhahn

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Andrea "XFox" Govoni wrote:

This has been a problem with autoconf for ages since it is very difficult to portably handle spaces when using command-line utilities. The simple solution is "don't do that!".

And what is the complicated one? :-)

If this is an autoconf's bug, should I file a bug against it? I cannot believe that in the twenty-first century we cannot yet deal with spaces and other characters in the pathname… I know almost nothing about all the autoconf and configure thing, where do you suggest me to start looking at if I would try to elaborate a patch by myself?

Autoconf produces a Unix shell script. Unix shell scripts pass arguments to sub-commands using spaces to delimit the arguments. Sometimes argument lists are expanded multiple times and expanded arguments may include spaces. Given the differences in shell behavior across the many systems that Autoconf supports, it is a very difficult job to fix the spaces problem. The Autoconf maintainers are well aware of the issue but no fix is within easy reach.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/