Re: toolchain/46750 (make oddity expanding variables assigned to with +=)

[dholland%NetBSD.org@localhost]

Synopsis: make oddity expanding variables assigned to with +=

State-Changed-From-To: feedback->open
State-Changed-By: dholland%NetBSD.org@localhost
State-Changed-When: Wed, 06 Apr 2022 23:21:50 +0000
State-Changed-Why:
Feedback was received. Nobody responded to the tech-toolchain post, so it's
not clear what the path forward is. There seem to be two choices:

1. Do nothing; the current behavior is only wrong in the sense that empty
appends accumulate extra whitspace, which is unsightly but has no semantic
consequences. Also it's not clear how you generate strings with multiple
consecutive spaces in them any other way.

2. Fix append so that if either side of the append is empty it just copies
the other string instead of also inserting a space.

Inertia favors #1. I kind of prefer #2, but I'm no longer in a position to
handle it myself; besides not having time after all rillig's changes I'm
no longer familiar with the code.