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From: "Tim Van Holder" <tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be>
To: <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: bash's 'test' is inconsistent on XP (causing autoconf testsuite failures)
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 13:59:39 +0100
Message-ID: <000001c196b2$00b6f560$d07c76d5@zastaixp>
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Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com

autoconf's testsuite shows several failures caused by
the same issue.  configure tries to source /dev/null
as a cache file, but that causes bash to complain that
/dev/null is not a regular file.  And that causes stderr
to differ from the expected result.
Now configure knows that some shells can't source
/dev/null (or any other special file), and so it
includes a test:

  if test -f $cache_file; then
    ... source the cache file
  fi

Unfortunately, our bash (2.05) returns 'true' for
'test -f /dev/null'; so it claims that /dev/null is a
regular file and then complains it isn't.  So either
'test' or '.' needs fixing.