OpenSSH-2.1: FROM in 'w' empty?

[Jim Knoble]

Circa 2000-May-24 12:08:49 -0400 schrieb Tom Bertelson:

: Pekka Savola wrote:
: > This is caused by discontinuation of an undocumented feature of
: > /bin/sh.  If you have bash-2.x as your /bin/sh, the configure script goes
: > wrong.

Pekka, what undocumented feature is that?  The line that you replace
below is (mostly; see below) an incredibly common Bourne shell idiom.

: > I patched configure and aclocal.m4.  The method used works for both bash1
: > and bash2, so the changes should be backward compatible.  I tested this
: > syntax on a couple of Redhat boxes and on Irix.
: > 
: > Regards,
: >   Pekka
: > 
: > --- configure   Sat May 20 08:48:05 2000
: > +++ configure.fixed     Tue May 23 17:59:14 2000
: > @@ -2957,7 +2957,7 @@
: > 
: >  fi
: > 
: > -       ossh_result=`eval "echo "$"$ossh_varname"`
                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This use of double quotes is confusing anyway and looks broken.  It
ought to read:

            ossh_result=`eval echo \$"$ossh_varname"`

or perhaps:
            
            ossh_result=`eval echo \$\{"${ossh_varname}"\}`

: > +       eval ossh_result=\$${ossh_varname}

Does this actually work?  I thought 'eval' spawned a subshell, but i
may be misremembering.  [Testing in bash-1.14.7....] Hmm, it does
actually work.  I certainly find that to be a much less complex
expression and like it better.  I would suggest the following, though:

            eval ossh_result=\$\{${ossh_varname}\}

in the general case, since it's possible for ${ossh_varname} to expand
to more than one word (or for that matter, to a parameter expression
such as 'blah:-haha'.

: I suspect this change will break a lot of other systems.  Remember there
: are still machines out there that don't understand the $(command) syntax
: (my stock Solaris with /bin/sh is one of them).
: 
: Is there another way to fix this and preserve the use of backticks?

Tom, i don't see any $() expression in the above change.  What are you
referring to?

-- 
jim knoble | jmknoble at jmknoble.cx | http://www.jmknoble.cx/