Re: [PATCH 2/5] docs: mention cost of globbing during variable expansion

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Eric,

On 26 Aug 2010, at 20:45, Eric Blake wrote:
> Not true, if $TMPDIR already has a value that contains globbing characters 
> (of course, the likelihood of this is slim, but the whole point of ${a=b} is 
> that you are assigning a value to $a _if_ it doesn't already have one, which 
> implies that you are also admitting that $a may already have an unspecified 
> value inherited from the user - and we know that it is never a good idea to 
> blindly trust user input to be sane.

Ah-hah! The penny has dropped... now I see why the outer quotes are worthwhile. 
 Thanks for the explanation.

If you didn't do it already (I didn't go over the follow-up patches as 
carefully, so I might have missed it), I think some version of the above added 
to the Autoconf manual would make it easier for others to understand what the 
difference is, and internalise the advantages of using outer quotes when 
possible.

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (address@hidden)

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