Re: recent patch breaks the build ?

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Nov 17, 2005, 10:33 UTC
Message-ID: <7voe4jy36p.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20051117021014.GC3968@reactrix.com>

Nick Hengeveld <nickh@reactrix.com> writes:

> Assuming --vernum does work, is there a reasonable/portable way to
> compare two hex values like 070801?

I would assume that it is always 6 lowercase hexdigits %06x when supported, or showing nothing to stdout for ancient ones.

A horrible but probably portable way would be:

	case `(echo 070801; curl-config --vernum) 2>/dev/null |
        	sort -r | sed -ne 2p` in
	070801)
        	echo Happy ;;
        *)
        	echo Sad ;;
	esac

The obvious one is unfortunately not very portable:

	if test 070801 \< `curl-config --vernum`
        then
        	echo "Happy"
	else
        	echo "Sad"
	fi

This would work if your test is bash/dash-builtin. The following do not seem to know about '<' '>' string comparison:

	GNU /usr/bin/test from coreutils (version 5.2.1)
        OpenBSD shell builtin
        Solaris /usr/bin/test