Re: whitespaces in filenames [was: bug in $(wildcard) on Windows?]

[Paul D. Smith]

%% Boris Kolpackov <address@hidden> writes:

  bk> "Paul D. Smith" <address@hidden> writes:
  >> * A new method for encoding strings would need to be found.  Maybe
  >> something like $[...] where "..." would be encoded.  This part is
  >> tricky and needs to be considered carefully.

  bk> Is this really necessary? Can't we just say that if someone wants say
  bk> a space be interpreted as space they just escape it, e.g.:

  bk> my\ file\ full\ of\ spaces: dollar\$ign
  bk>   ...

If we do this then we will introduce a serious backward-compatibility
problem; backslashes today are not universal escape characters.  It
unquestionably would have been easier if the original author of make,
back in the 70's, had spent some time thinking about these issues and
providing a standard escaping mechanism, like the shell does, that
worked uniformly across the makefile syntax, but he didn't and we don't
have one.

As a result, backslashes are used as directory separators (in the
DOS/OS2/Windows/etc. ports), in some places the DO escape characters, in
others they don't, and where they do escape characters the result of
their use is often inconsistent.

Probably a change like this would need to engender a major version bump
in make (GNU make 4.0) and would need a lot of conversation with LOTS of
different users of make, and careful reading of the POSIX make standard,
to be sure whatever we did was only breaking the more fringe makefiles,
that there were acceptable to people currently requiring backslashes,
and that we didn't contradict the standard.

  bk> Also it would be nice to think about how this feature is going to
  bk> play with guile (i.e., could there will be an overlap).

I don't think there's an issue with Guile using the same methods that
make does.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
 http://www.gnu.org                      http://make.paulandlesley.org
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist