Re: Environment variable to turn off carets

[Akim Demaille]

Hi Frank!

> Le 2 août 2014 à 14:07, Frank Heckenbach <address@hidden> a écrit :
> 
> So let me suggest an alternative:
> 
> If all programs that support caret output would recognize a common
> environment variable (say "NO_CARET_OUTPUT"), all of the above
> complications would disappear:
> 
> - No version checks are required, since older versions simple ignore
>  the variable.
> 
> - One doesn't even have to know which programs (Bison, GCC, maybe
>  flex etc.) support carets if they use a common variable.
> 
> - The Makefiles don't have do to anything since environment
>  variables are automatically propagated. Only the editor, i.e. the
>  instance that actually knows that carets are not useful there,
>  needs to set the variable once. (So not only DRY, but also SOC, to
>  drop some TLAs. ;)
> 
> Does this seem reasonable? The implementation of such a variable
> shouldn't be so difficult (if you like, I can probably make a
> patch). Of course, it then would need to be done in GCC (etc.) too,
> but since Bison supported carets first AFAIK, I'm starting here ...

That sounds reasonable, indeed.  However I feel such a
decision should be standardized at the GNU level, it would
not help it Bison were to make the decision by itself
(and actually, I think we did that after GCC; maybe before
it was enabled by default in GCC, but after).

You should submit your proposal for inclusion in the GNU
coding standards.