Re: 16-numeric-args.patch

[Gary V. Vaughan]

On Sat, Oct 13, 2001 at 01:33:49PM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
> To me, this is broken.  M4 has its own rules for spaces, I fail to see
> why numeric args would make a difference, nonetheless, waiting for an
> approval.
> 
> Index: ChangeLog
> from  Akim Demaille  <address@hidden>
> 
>       * m4/utility.c (m4_skip_space): Remove.
>       (m4_numeric_arg): Be M4 consistent: there is no reason for leading
>       and trailing spaces to be valid in numeric arguments.
>       * doc/m4.texinfo (Changesyntax): Adjust a now broken unreadable
>       example having a trailing space.

Hmmm, well... we already strip leading spaces from unquoted arguments,
so presumably that code has already stripped unquoted leading spaces by
the time the builtin receives its argv?  I think we are in agreement
here, that normal m4 whitespace rules should apply to numeric
arguments.  I am slightly worried about old code that relies on this
"feature" though... perhaps Rene wrote it this way for compatibility
with vendor M4?

Do you have access to other implementations for compatison?

If this is a peculiarity of GNU M4, then you have my okay.  Otherwise I
guess we need to keep it in :-(  The skip_space function should be using
the syntax table to decide what is skipped anyway!

Cheers,
        Gary.
-- 
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