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$(.FOO) documentation confusion


From: Stepan Kasal
Subject: $(.FOO) documentation confusion
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:06:46 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i

Hello,
  I noticed the following change in the CVS:
(Sorry, I have probably missed it on the list.)

-* Leading _ in Macro Names::    $(_FOO) on ancient hosts
+* Special Chars in Names::      $(.FOO), $(_FOO), $(007), etc.
...
address@hidden Special Chars in Names
address@hidden Special Characters in Make Macro Names
+
+Posix limits macro names to nonempty strings containing only
address@hidden letters and digits, @samp{.}, and @samp{_}.  Many
address@hidden implementations allow a wider variety of characters, but
+portable makefiles should avoid them.

 Some ancient @command{make} implementations don't support leading
 underscores in macro names.  [...]

The subtitle makes the reader suspicious about leading dot,
underscore, or digit.  The text of the node explains that there in no
need to fear about leading underscore anymore.

But the questions of leading dot or digit remains: is it safe?
(I suppose the answer is that it was always safe.)

I think that the manual would be clearer if the menu line were
changed to:

* Special Chars in Names::      Special Characters in Macro Names

(there are two occurences)

Would you agree?

Have a nice day,
        Stepan




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