[R] Perl v5.6.0 breaks the configure script

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

> 
> On Wed, Apr 05, 2000 at 10:31:57AM +0100, Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, tom kennedy wrote:
> [..] 
> > I think the trick is to use perl itself, as in
> > 
> > perl_version=`${PERL} -e '$v=$]; $v =~ s/(.)\..*/\1/;print $v'`
> > 
> > as perl is guaranteed to return its version as a number like 5.006
> > even for `v5.6.0'.
> > 
> > Unfortunately the "]" in there confuses m4 when building configure
> > from aclocal.m4, but I am sure the experts can fix that.
> 
> One would be to use the English module and PERL_VERSION instead:
> 
> perl_version=
> = `${PERL}-MEnglish  -e '$v=$PERL_VERSION; $v =~ s/(.)\..*/\1/;print $v'`
> 
> > One could even do the whole test in Perl:
> > 
> > r_cv_prog_perl_v5=
> > `${PERL} -e 'if($] >= 5) {print "yes";} else {print "no"}'`
> 
> Likewise:
> 
> r_cv_prog_perl_v5=
> `${PERL} -MEnglish -e 'if($] >= 5) {print "yes";} else {print "no"}'`
Um, not that but I think we know what you meant!

Yes, I know and I considered that, but I do not think the English module is
guaranteed to be present. This is a test of the Perl version, and as far as
I could see -MEnglish does not work in Perl 4.  (The -M flag is not in the
Quick Reference Guide for 4.019.)  So I think your version assumes the
thing it is testing for, Perl 5.x.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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