Re: Code obfuscation

[Akim Demaille]

| Can anyone explain what this code in autoupdate does? :-
| 
| 
| my $macros = new Autom4te::XFile ("$autoconf"
|                . " --trace AU_DEFUN:'AU:\$f:\$1'"
|                . " --trace define:'AC:\$f:\$1'"
|                . " --melt /dev/null |");
| 
| 
| It appears to be causing the error msg:-
| 
| no such file or directory: /dev/null
| 
| on OS/2. This may be due to a bug in sh or Perl on OS/2 but it's difficult 
| to debug. What exactly is the purpose of '/dev/null |' above, and can I 
| try using something else instead just to get a pointer to the underlying 
| problem?

It says `trace all the AU_DEFUN and define that are contained in
Autoconf'.

--melt says, don't use the m4f, since if you do, then there is nothing
to trace.  The /dev/null stands for `I don't want the definitions
coming from ./configure.ac, I want those of the lib only, so since
autoconf wants to trace the latter if present, tell it to trace /dev/null'.