> cc: groff@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:18:17 +0100
> From: Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk>
>
> > - system("groff -Tpdf -dPDF.EXPORT=1 -mom -z $cmdstring 2>&1 | grep
> > '^\.ds' | groff -Tpdf -mom - $preconv $cmdstring");
> > + system("groff -Tpdf -dPDF.EXPORT=1 -mom -z $cmdstring 2>&1 | grep
> > \"^\.ds\" | groff -Tpdf -mom - $preconv $cmdstring");
>
> This looks wrong both times. :-) It's a double-quoted string in perl,
> so backslash is interpreted as an escape thus \. needlessly escapes the
> non-special dot giving just a dot and grep sees `^.ds' for the pattern
> AFAICS.
>
> $ perl
> system("prargv a\.b 'a\.b' \"a\.b\" \"a\\.b\"");
> 0 '/home/ralph/bin/prargv'
> 1 'a.b'
> 2 'a.b'
> 3 'a.b'
> 4 'a\\.b'
> $
>
> #4 is what's wanted;
FWIW, I repeated this experiment on MS-Windows, using a small program
named "echoargv" instead of prargv, and I get this:
0: `echocmd'
1: `a.b'
2: `'a.b''
3: `a.b'
4: `a\.b'
as you see, my suggestion yields in #3 exactly what you get in #2 on
Unix (which on Windows retains the single quotes, something that's
definitely not wanted). So I submit that my suggestion was correct,
in the sense that it didn't change the semantics of its Unix original.
IOW, if there is a problem in that command, it exists on Unix as well,
and is unrelated to the change I proposed.
Am I missing something?
