2 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 18c2027d..b196d98d 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ build-aux/
 !build-aux/gl/
 !build-aux/gnulib/
 !build-aux/m4/
+!build-aux/thanks-gen
 /ChangeLog
 /config.cache
 /config.h
diff --git a/build-aux/thanks-gen b/build-aux/thanks-gen
new file mode 100755
index 00000000..92090ced
--- /dev/null
+++ b/build-aux/thanks-gen
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+#!/usr/bin/perl -nl
+# Use Perl's multi-byte alignment code, via sprintf, while
+# performing a rudimentary check for duplicate names and
+# removing duplicate name,email pairs.
+use Encode;
+
+BEGIN { my (%elide, %seen, %name) }
+
+chomp;
+my ($name, $email) = split '\0', decode ('UTF-8', $_);
+
+if ($elide{"!$name"}) {
+; # ignore this author
+} elsif (index ($name, '!') == 0) {
+  $elide{$name}++;
+} elsif ($seen{$name}++) {
+  warn "$0: NO-THANKS: duplicate name: $name\n";
+} else {
+  print encode ('UTF-8', sprintf ('%-36s', $name)), $email;
+}