Re: Filenames with embedded spaces [Was: Query regarding make error]

[J. Grant]

Hello

Thanks for this info

> Do paths with escaped spaces always work as you want?

Nope.  The strings seem to loose their /escapedness/ after they are loaded.

addsuffix and addprefix both catch the "\ " as a normal space (rather 
than escaped space) and then treat as two strings.

> [makefile begins]
> files = My\ Documents My\ Computer/Control\ Panel
>
> .PHONY: all
> all: $(files)
>
> %:
>         @echo testing '$@'
>         @echo '  dir:           $(dir $@)'
>         @echo '  notdir:        $(notdir $@)'
>         @echo '  prefix&suffix: $(addsuffix -omega,$(addprefix alpha-,$@))'
> [makefile ends]
>
> I get output like
>
> testing My Documents
>   dir:           ./ ./
>   notdir:        My Documents
>   prefix&suffix: alpha-My-omega alpha-Documents-omega

Seems like it added to 'files' as one string ok, but then treated as two 
strings.

> testing My Computer/Control Panel
>   dir:           ./ Computer/ ./
>   notdir:        My Control Panel
>   prefix&suffix: alpha-My-omega alpha-Computer/Control-omega alpha-Panel-omega

Not loaded ok as second string in 'files'. Do not know how it ended up 
with the dir "Computer/", and the remainder 'My Control Panel' is not 
what I was expecting.

Are people relying on make functioning in this fashion?  Do you know why 
the first string came out ok, but the second when wrong?  The directory 
parsing in strings must be the problem for "My\ Computer/Control\ Panel" 
I think.



If fixing this to retain /escapedness/ is not suitable, perhaps an 
alternative might be support %20 like html files use?

I would like to do the "d:\test.c" style path support too, if that would 
be considered for inclusion?


The only other way I have been able to use quoted paths with make is to 
create the complete commands in an external scripting language.  i.e. I 
created a Makefile like:

===============================
all:
        gcc -o test "d:\test.c"
===============================


Kind regards


JG