Re: [gettext] changequote considered harmful

[Bruno Haible]

Stepan Kasal wrote:
> changequote is consider risky:

It works fine for me.

> Attached please find a proposed patch.

> -changequote(,)dnl
> -typedef int array [2 * (__GNU_GETTEXT_SUPPORTED_REVISION(0) >= 1) - 1];
> -changequote([,])dnl
> +typedef int array [[2 * (__GNU_GETTEXT_SUPPORTED_REVISION(0) >= 1) - 1]];

This is unmaintainable: It mixes two different syntaxes in the same line of
code, namely C and autoconf. The same problem also exists when it mixes sh
and autoconf syntax (think of the brackets used in case statements and in sed
expressions).
  - When I'll want to add another array declaration to the code snippet the
    next time, I'll most probably forget to double the brackets. And I will
    search for 5 minutes why the macro doesn't behave as expected.
  - I want to be able to copy & paste C code snippets and shell commands
    from and to autoconf macros. Having to scan the entire code, character
    by character, for autoconf trigraphs and for [] is not welcome.

Bruno