Brought in commit 6ca627a, May 2006 and this is the first time someone has an issue with it... We could replace the bc use with a line using printf instead, but it would of course still rely on an external tool being present. I don't actually think this is a curl bug, other than perhaps that it could be documented somewhere.

One does not need any external tools here. Indeed, the 1st line using bc can be written as

checknum="$(($cmajor*256*256 + $cminor*256 + ${cpatch:-0}))"

Similarly if you don't use @VERSIONNUM@, but parse @CURLVERSION@ in the same way as you parse the input and get checknum, you can get nownum from the shell.

If you'd care to take a pull request fixing this, I can do it...

If you'd care to take a pull request fixing this, I can do it.

Yes please. Just make sure you're also not doing any bash'isms as I believe $() is? And I don't think a plain shell evaluates math expressions like that...

Using only Bourne sh, expr and sed:

        checknum=`expr $cmajor \* 256 \* 256 + $cminor \* 256 + ${cpatch:-0}`
        numdigits=`echo @VERSIONNUM@ | sed -e 'y/abcdef/ABCDEF/; s/0x//; s/./ &/g; s/[ABCDEF]/1&/g; y/ABCDEF/012345/'`
        nownum=0
        for d in $numdigits; do nownum=`expr $nownum \* 16 + $d`; done

expr is another external program.

Anyway, I do not understand why one needs to do the arithmetic of this sort, as you can start by comparing major versions, if they are equal move to the minor ones, and finally, if needed, to the patch level... Yes it would be few lines longer, but much less cryptic.

expr is typically part of a coreutils package and available on any sensible distro. But I think you're right about unnecessary arithmetic. Just unpick @CURLVERSION@ in the same way as $checkfor, rather than unhexifying @VERSIONNUM@.

Would testing with FreeBSDs /bin/sh suffice, or you recommend some other "bad" shell to test with?

Yes, I think that would be a good test. Or 'dash' on a Linux system.

The challenge is to make a conversion from or a comparison with a hexadecimal number without using a separate tool. I don't think that's possible. Then the question is really which separate tool that is most likely to be around and thus least troublesome to depend on... Contenders include bc and printf. I don't think expr alone can do it?

I don't understand why you insist on having to deal with that hexadecimal number --- as instead you can using the normal split version format right away.

Oh yes, you can indeed. I was just too stuck in the same mindset that code is currently written! The solution could be to simply use @CURLVERSION@ instead of @VERSIONNUM@.

Alternatively, we remove all dependencies (even on sh) and go with #3154

We can indeed use @CURLVERSION@, but we still don't get away from requiring a shell which has POSIX cut and test utils, and I don't think that's entirely representative of the platforms where curl builds. (granted, a tool like curl-config has perhaps the most use in a unix environment toolchain, but that's not to say that someone with a build from MSVC can't find it useful)

Thanks!