Re: semi-colon in makefiles?

[Paul D. Smith]

%% Martin Naskovski <address@hidden> writes:

  mn> Now, the same script on unix (solaris 2.6) where classpath
  mn> jars/classes are delimited with a colon (:) rather than a
  mn> semicolon as in Win2k/dos/winwhatever, it runs a-ok, with as many
  mn> classpath jars as you want it to.  On Win2k, here, I get this dumb
  mn> error, and I'm at a loss - am I not DENOTING the lame ';'
  mn> (semicolon) properly or does make break when it sees it, that is,
  mn> it thinks its something else, like end of a dependency or some
  mn> such rule?

No.  That's what I tried to say in my last message: make doesn't
interpret command lines at all, it simply hands them to the shell to be
executed.  The _only_ thing make does with commands is expand make
variables.

You are using Windows, so your life is complicated.  I know very little
about Windows.  Make on Windows can be configured to use a number of
different methods for shells, and depending on which one yours uses,
it might behave differently.

If you have a UNIX shell on your Windows box, for example, make might be
using that; in that case, the shell will treat the ";" as a command
separator, as always, and that might cause the problems you're seeing
here.  Or, make might be using command.com, or something else.

Anyway, the problem is with the shell that make is invoking to run that
command, not with make itself.

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
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