Re: Add tr to common programs

[Karl Berry]

    A bug report on the autoconf list recently reported that autoconf has been
    producing configure files for several years now with a dependence on
    tr[1]
    [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2008-10/msg00124.html

The config.status for texinfo uses tr in one place, as far as I can see:

      expr "X$arg" : "X\\(.*\\)" | tr -d "$as_nl"

Not for $as_cr as your message suggests.  Is that a recent change?
Are there other uses?

Anyway, I am surprised that your experience is that tr is more portable
than awk for this.  I've never thought that \r and the like were
portable across tr's, although I haven't made a study of it lately.  If
\r is not portable across awk's, how about \015?  It is hard to imagine
an awk that doesn't support that ...

Adding tr for the sake of this one small task seems a bit troublesome to
me, per Ralf's mail.  Not that I'm saying no, but let's discuss ...

karl