Re: RFC: Use program_transform_name correctly

Jim Blandy
2003-10-08T17:44:53Z

Felix Lee <felix.1@canids.net> writes:

> Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com>:
> > ! t='$(program_transform_name)'; echo runtest | sed -e '' $$t; \
>
> it looks to me like this is written for a program_transform_name
> that's a concatenated list of -e options. the -e '' will keep
> sed from complaining if program_transform_name is null.
>
> I remember at some point in the past, sometimes
> program_transform_name was a semicolon-separated list of sed
> commands, sometimes it was a list of sed -e options. Don't know
> if it's consistent now.

All right --- that at least explains what the intent was. However,
GNU sed and the POSIX spec now both agree that, if a -e option is
present, any additional arguments are filenames, not scripts. So this
is definitely broken.