Re: coreutils-5.1.3 released: bug-fix-only, candidate for stable 5.2.0

[Paul Eggert]

Daniel Jacobowitz <address@hidden> writes:

> > $ a='a\b'
> > $ expr "X$a" : 'X\(.*\)'
> > a\b
> 
> That's a neat trick, I didn't know it.  Is this in the shell
> portability guide?

No, because some older version of expr can't handle arguments larger
than 120 bytes (this is documented).

>  Note that all --enable, --with, and A=B options are
> passed through echo and sed, at least as of the latest version I have
> installed.

Yes; autoconf doesn't support \ in file names.