On 14 September 2016 at 00:22, Paul Eggert <[email protected]> wrote: > I ran into this problem when building the Autoconf manual using Texinfo 6.3 > on Fedora 24, which has Perl 5.22.2. With the attached file (which is a > stripped-down version of the manual), the command 'makeinfo autoconf.texi' > complains: > > Negative repeat count does nothing at > /home/eggert/opt/Linux-x86_64/texinfo-6.3/share/texinfo/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm > line 1038. > Negative repeat count does nothing at > /home/eggert/opt/Linux-x86_64/texinfo-6.3/share/texinfo/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm > line 1039. > > These complaints seem to be bogus. I expect this some sort of Perl > compatibility issue.
Evidently this is a new warning message in perl. I put a statement to print the value that was the operand to "x" (string multiplication), and here was the result with your test file: $ ../texi2any.pl autoconf.texi 1 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 5 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 9 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 2 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 10 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. -1 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 6 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 10 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 2 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. 60 at ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm line 1038. I guess that it shouldn't be -1. I'd guess it's due to the line: before making Light, God split the Chaos into Land and Water; it takes a being one character too long. The solution would be to check if the variable is negative, and if it is, don't do anything. > PS. I suggest adding this as a test case for Texinfo, as it would be amusing > to test Texinfo with Chaos....
