ac_vpsub quoting problem

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

A config.status created for gettext-tools by autoconf 2.63 on normal Linux
contains these lines:

ac_sed_extra="/^[        ]*VPATH[        ]*=/{
s/:*\$(srcdir):*/:/
s/:*\${srcdir}:*/:/
s/:address@hidden@:*/:/
s/^\([^=]*=[     ]*\):*/\1/
s/:*$//
s/^[^=]*=[       ]*$//
}
...

The two lines with (srcdir) are pointless because they can never match:
the \$ gets transformed to simple $ by the shell's transformation of
double-quoted strings, and in the regular expression it then denotes the
end of line.

This comes from status,m4, around line 660:

cat >>$CONFIG_STATUS <<_ACEOF || ac_write_fail=1
ac_sed_extra="$ac_vpsub
$extrasub
_ACEOF

Possible fixes are:

  - Double every backslash in the definition of ac_vpsub,

  - Enclose the reference to ac_vpsub in single-quotes:

cat >>$CONFIG_STATUS <<_ACEOF || ac_write_fail=1
ac_sed_extra='$ac_vpsub'"
$extrasub
_ACEOF

Bruno