Re: RFI: Trailing blanks

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Gary" == Gary V Vaughan <address@hidden> writes:

Gary> But then, I wonder why you bother to `smash' anyway?  

Because I frequently read configure, and I like to have it readable.
My Autoconf programming style is also based on the hypothetic idea
that some day M4 could be able to expand

define(foo, bar
baz)
    foo

info

    bar
    baz

instead of

    bar
baz



Gary> Recently I've taken to not using dnl for things like:

Gary>   AC_REQUIRE([AC_PROG_CC])dnl
 
Gary> Why is it there at all?  Just to save a blank line in configure.
Gary> Obfuscating the source seems like a bad way to make the machine
Gary> readable output prettier.  

I don't agree with `machine' here, at least it is not 100% of the
case.  Or else using __oline__ in #line is stupid, __file__:__line__
would be smarter (as a matter of fact, this is kind of a question too,
why not __file__:__line__).

But I understand your point.

Gary> Who cares if the machine readable parts are ugly?  Well,
Gary> obviously you and I do, and perhaps a few dozen others who read
Gary> through it while we develop complicated code generation macros,
Gary> but I don't think we should make the user interface for the
Gary> thousands of casual users less friendly for the sake of
Gary> ourselves.

I'm not sure I understand where you think it is less friendly.  We are
not requiring that people dnl their AC_REQUIRE, we advice that they do
so :)


Gary> I really think that leaving the blanks in is the right solution.

The last argument in favor was also normalizing configure as much as
possible, to avoid useless diff's.  But now that we use LINENO, it
should be less of a problem.  So if everybody agrees --smash is
useless, let's remove it.