RE: Bug with semicolon in target specific variable?

[Bhatt, Milan C]

Yeah I did figure that semicolons had special meaning in GMAKE, but my first
example is actually a springboard for the second one.  If I quote everything
with "", then it works except for this strange character limit.

FYI, the \ also has the special meaning of line continuation in GMAKE ;)

Milan

-----Original Message-----
From: Johan Bezem [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 5:05 AM
To: Bhatt Milan C
Cc: 'address@hidden'
Subject: Re: Bug with semicolon in target specific variable?


Semicolons have a special meaning in GNU-make. RTFM!
Escaping with \; might help. Didn't try, though.

Johan Bezem
CSK Software AG

> "Bhatt, Milan C" wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> It seems GMAKE doesn't like having semicolons within the value of a
> target specific variable.
> 
> 
> a : SOME_VAR := c; d
> a :
>        @echo $(SOME_VAR)
> 
> The above exampe gives me the following error:
> 
> c
> /bin/sh: d: Execute permission denied.
> gmake: *** [a] Error 127
> 
> So it prints 'c' as expected and then tries to execute 'd' as if it
> were a command.  As a workaround I used quotes around the entire value
> of the target specific variable and everything seemed to work fine
> until I hit about 130 or more characters:
> 
> 
> a : SOME_VAR := "c; d;
> eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
> # 'e' x 130+ characters
> a :
>        @echo $(SOME_VAR)
> 
> 
> Once there are more than a 130 characters  AND there is a semicolon
> within the quoted string, I get this error message:
> 
> Makefile:3: Malformed per-target variable definition
> Bus error (core dumped)
> 
> 
> This error disappears once I remove the semicolon from the variable.
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> Milan