autoconf probes of float format break irix bootstrap

[Russ Allbery]

Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> writes:
> "Billinghurst, David (CRTS)" <David.Billinghurst@riotinto.com> wrote:

>> The autoconf probes of float format don't work on irix.  The test compiles
>> OK and object file contains the string IEEEFP, but irix grep doesn't detect
>> it.

> We should probably run the binary through `strings', if `strings'
> exists.  It does on IRIX.

But it doesn't always look for what you want.  From the man page for
strings on IRIX:

     The strings command looks for ASCII strings in a binary file.  A
     string is any sequence of 4 or more printing characters ending with a
     newline or a null character, or (if not in XPG4 mode) any
     non-printing character.

I don't think these strings are always null or newline terminated, are
they?  And even if we can force non-XPG4 mode and all platforms have a way
to do that, that may break the attempt to match unprintable bits in the
middle of the string with ".".

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             < http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ >