Re: changequote

[Bruno Haible]

Hello Ralf,

> > (Recall that use of
> > changequote is more reliable than this [[ ]] workaround, IMO.)
> 
> Sigh.  I wish that if you had to keep your own ways of doing things this
> way, rather than using [[ ]] or quadrigraphs, then at least you'd be
> consequent enough to also fight for a change of the Autoconf manual to
> reflect it, rather than keep diverging from it.

I tried this, in the thread starting at
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2005-07/msg00100.html
and continued on
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2005-08/msg00001.html
(cross-posted to the autoconf list).

My arguments were not strong enough, so I applied the patch of the [[ ]]
proponents. The result was that a little more than one year later, a
quoting bug appeared in gettext.m4:
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2006-11/msg00260.html

The lesson I learned from it is to prefer changequote. But I doubt that
1 bug that I introduced will be enough to convince people. More people
need to fall into the same pitfall and complain about it, until the
arguments for changequote can convince a majority.

> <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Changequote-is-Evil.html>

I think this section in the autoconf manual was written because Akim wanted
to make deep changes to the way autoconf macros are processed, and wanted to
warn people ahead of time. It's a different motivation than the worry
"what leads to less bugs in the long run".

Bruno