ocamlbuild single quotes causing trouble

ocamlbuild single quotes causing trouble

[Andrew Warshaver]

Hi all,

I was trying to compile a project using ocamlbuild with an external 
library located distantly, so I did the following (I am also doing 
preprocessing on the file):

ocamlbuild -libs pcre -cflags -I,~/multi-oc/lib -pp "camlp4o 
~/multi-oc\/lib/pa_type_conv.cmo ~/multi-oc/lib/pa_sexp_conv.cmo" 
live_query.byte

Then ocamlbuild eventually runs the following command:

/usr/local/home/godi310/godi/bin/ocamlc.opt -c -I '~/multi-oc/lib' -pp 
'camlp4o ~/multi-oc/lib/pa_type_conv.cmo 
~/multi-oc/lib/pa_sexp_conv.cmo' -o id.cmi id.mli

and spits the error:

File "id.mli", line 1, characters 0-9:
Unbound module Jane
Command exited with code 2.

I noticed, however, if I remove the single quotes from the command -- 
like this --

/usr/local/home/godi310/godi/bin/ocamlc.opt -c -I ~/multi-oc/lib -pp 
'camlp4o ~/multi-oc/lib/pa_type_conv.cmo 
~/multi-oc/lib/pa_sexp_conv.cmo' -o id.cmi id.mli

it works just fine.  I also discovered that if I don't use the ~ abbrev. 
then everything is happy (although this took me a long time to 
discover!).  Is this a problem with ocamlbuild, or something deeper, or 
perhaps even expected behaviour?

Andrew

Re: [Caml-list] ocamlbuild single quotes causing trouble

[Alain Frisch]

Andrew Warshaver wrote:
> it works just fine.  I also discovered that if I don't use the ~ abbrev.
> then everything is happy (although this took me a long time to
> discover!).

The shell is responsible to expand ~ before calling the program. If you
quote it, it won't be expanded; this is normal. When you put ~ on
ocamlbuild's command line, as in "-I,~/multi-oc/lib" it is not expanded
either (~ is interpreted only at the beginning of a word on the command
line).

> Is this a problem with ocamlbuild, or something deeper, or
> perhaps even expected behaviour?

Maybe ocamlbuild should support natively options like "-I xxx" (without
quotes), so that xxx will be processed by the shell.

-- Alain

Re: [Caml-list] ocamlbuild single quotes causing trouble

[Andrew Warshaver]

Alain Frisch wrote:
> Andrew Warshaver wrote:
>> it works just fine.  I also discovered that if I don't use the ~ abbrev.
>> then everything is happy (although this took me a long time to
>> discover!).
> 
> The shell is responsible to expand ~ before calling the program. If you
> quote it, it won't be expanded; this is normal. When you put ~ on
> ocamlbuild's command line, as in "-I,~/multi-oc/lib" it is not expanded
> either (~ is interpreted only at the beginning of a word on the command
> line).
> 
Thanks for the explanation.  But is there any reason that ocamlbuild has 
to add the single quotes when transferring the argument to ocamlc?  And, 
if it didn't, would it then work appropriately?

>> Is this a problem with ocamlbuild, or something deeper, or
>> perhaps even expected behaviour?
> 
> Maybe ocamlbuild should support natively options like "-I xxx" (without
> quotes), so that xxx will be processed by the shell.
> 
> -- Alain

Re: [Caml-list] ocamlbuild single quotes causing trouble

[Philippe Wang]

Andrew Warshaver wrote:
>
> Alain Frisch wrote:
>> Andrew Warshaver wrote:
>>> it works just fine.  I also discovered that if I don't use the ~ 
>>> abbrev.
>>> then everything is happy (although this took me a long time to
>>> discover!).
>>
>> The shell is responsible to expand ~ before calling the program. If you
>> quote it, it won't be expanded; this is normal. When you put ~ on
>> ocamlbuild's command line, as in "-I,~/multi-oc/lib" it is not expanded
>> either (~ is interpreted only at the beginning of a word on the command
>> line).
>>
> Thanks for the explanation.  But is there any reason that ocamlbuild 
> has to add the single quotes when transferring the argument to 
> ocamlc?  And, if it didn't, would it then work appropriately?
The quotes are necessary to consider that the block is a single argument.
If you want to remove those quotes, then you have to "guess" what the 
user meant (i.e. guessing where the quotes would have been if they were 
there).
In some cases, it's impossible to guess with a 100% accuracy...

Well, I suggest you to use $HOME instead of ~.
(then you have to use double quotes instead of quotes, so that the shell 
expands $HOME, as the variables inside simple quotes don't expand -- 
well I hope you are not using a too weird shell ;-)


--
  Philippe Wang
    mail[at]philippewang.info