If emacs is not available, test_expect_equal would be called with only one argument. The patch fixes this by quoting the (possibly empty) $(cat OUTPUT) argument. --- test/emacs | 2 +- 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) diff --git a/test/emacs b/test/emacs index 198c27b..3f8c72d 100755 --- a/test/emacs +++ b/test/emacs @@ -412,7 +412,7 @@ test_emacs '(notmuch-search "id:\"bought\"") (yank) (test-output)' sed -i -e 's/^thread:.*$/thread:XXX/' OUTPUT -test_expect_equal $(cat OUTPUT) "thread:XXX" +test_expect_equal "$(cat OUTPUT)" "thread:XXX" test_begin_subtest 'Hiding message following HTML part' test_subtest_known_broken -- 1.7.7.3