Re: patch for regex.m4

[Paul Eggert]

>>> I removed m4_syscmd, ..., because they were not working on either Mac
>>> OS/X or RHEL3.
>>
>> Hmm, why not?  Shouldn't they be working?  What versions of m4 and
>> Autoconf
>> were you using?  Let's try to see what the underlying problem is first,
>> before removing this from regex.m4.
>
> Well, I have to admit, I'm not an expert at autoconf or m4... The
> versions I'm using are
>
> autoconf: 2.59; m4: 1.4 (on Mac OS/X 10.3)
> Autoconf: 2.59; m4: 1.4.1 (on RHEL 3).

You should upgrade to m4 1.4.3, unless these older m4 versions have
been patched heavily.

> In both cases running sh -vx configure showed that these looked like
> they were not doing anything at all. That is, it was as if they were
> comments and the enclosed code was just eliminated.

That's the expected behavior.  The m4_syscmd code is executed when
'autoconf' is run, not when 'configure' is run.  So it sounds like
things were working correctly for you.