On 2023-06-17 08:25, Jim Meyering wrote:

> Thanks. However, I noticed that this change makes it so our
> semi-automated copyright year updates would fail to change this usage:
> that script doesn't account for the use of "\en" in place of "-". It's
> an already too-complex script, and I am loath to complicate it further
> just to support this use case, so am inclined to revert this one hunk:

I hope it's OK if I took the time to add support for \(en to that script 
instead, by installing the attached patch into Gnulib. It wasn't as bad 
as I thought it might be, as it added only two lines to the script.

I have weakness for troff, having written my PhD thesis in it. This was 
the original 7th Edition Unix troff, using the C/A/T phototypesetter 
that was troff's main target in the 1970s. I spent waaay too much time 
in the 1970s writing troff macros, just as I suppose I spend too much 
time today hacking on Perl scripts....