RE: why does make strip / at the end of a directory prerequisite??

[Mark Galeck (CW)]

Thank you Lane for a very thorough explanation.  

I am still however not 100% convinced that make strips away "/" and treats "%/" 
as %, and this pattern would match everything:

%/:
        touch $@

address@hidden: make foobar
make: *** No rule to make target `foobar'.  Stop.
address@hidden: make foobar/
touch foobar/
touch: setting times of `foobar/': No such file or directory
make: *** [foobar/] Error 1

Definitely only the second one matched.  


>I assume that your overall goal is to have a single rule that can be
used to create directories, but won't fire for non-directory files. If
so, then you should be able to accomplish that goal by using your fix,
then specifying "x/." as the prerequisite in each rule that needs a
directory "x" to exist:

%/.:
       mkdir -p $@

dir/foobar: dir/.
       touch $@



Yes I found that too, but, for some other reasons which I don't want to go into 
right now, adding /. is too much.  Being able to add only / would be perfect.


Mark