Re: Conditional append

[Stepan Kasal]

Hi.

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 12:20:57PM -0800, Shaun Jackman wrote:
> Is there any reason why the append operator shouldn't treat an
> undefined variable as empty?

Safety, I guess.

make handles variables differently from normal imperative languages,
so you can do this in your makefile:

a=$b c
b=d

all:
        echo $a


Automake, OTOH, traces the variable assignments to the variables in the
normal order.  If a variable is undefined, the user might meant to define
it later, which is not possible in Automake.  So Automake is more
restrictive, to prevent confusion.

Alexandre, am I right?

Regards,
        Stepan Kasal