FW: Please educate me

[Medland, Bill]

Thanks for the responses guys, but..
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Laight [mailto:david at l8s.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 3:33 AM
> Cc: Wine devel (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: Please educate me
> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 04:13:03AM +0200, Sylvain Petreolle wrote:
> > > noticed that 
> > > 
> > > for ac_dir in /sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH
> > > 
> > > was splitting as 
> > > 1. /sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
> > > 2. /bin
> > > 3. /usr/bin
> > > etc.
> > 
> > it's a normal behaviour, because for uses space as a
> > separator, not ':' ??
> > 
> > > 
> > > Now, I know I can force it to work by changing the
> > > for loop to 
> > > for ac_dir in /sbin /usr/sbin $PATH
> 
> If you have:
> 	more_path="/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH"
> you can do:
> 	save_ifs="$IFS"
> 	IFS=" :"
> 	for ac_dir in $more_path
> 	do
> 		IFS="$save_ifs"
> 		...
> 	done
> 
> So that the shell treats ':' as a separator when
> parsing the output of the substitution.
> 
> 
> 	David
> 
> -- 
> David Laight: david at l8s.co.uk
> 
So why does "for" use spaces as the separator between the /sbin, the
/usr/sbin and the $PATH but $IFS while expanding the $PATH (which is using
:)?  (And how come configure used to work OK but doesn't now?)

(And, of course, it is configure.ac I will have to change so I don't get to
change how AC_PATH_PROG gets expanded, and using spaces to separate will go
against the documentation on autoconf)

Bill