user hostile gobbledygook in top level Makefile

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Nov 23, 2000, Bill Wendling <wendling@ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:

> I wasn't aware that -z wasn't portable.

>From the CVS autoconf manual:

Contrary to a common belief, @samp{test -n @var{string}} and @samp{test
-z @var{string}} @strong{are} portable, nevertheless many shells (such
as Solaris 2.5, AIX 3.2, UNICOS 10.0.0.6, Digital Unix 4 etc.) have
bizarre precedence and may be confused if @var{string} looks like an
operator:

@example
$ test -n =
test: argument expected
@end example

If there are risks, use @samp{test "x@var{string}" = x} or @samp{test
"x@var{string}" != x} instead.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  aoliva@{cygnus.com, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist    *Please* write to mailing lists, not to me