Paul, Thanks for info. At least I know where I stand on this.
But, few things frustrate me more than backward compatibility preventing improvements from being made. If you did add syntax to support escaping of : in prereqs, I don't doubt that some Makefiles might break. But, I would think that it would be a very, very small % of Makefiles. And, those Makefiles could be update to work with this new version, i.e. that issue can be fixed within the tool. I on the other hand will have to hack around this problem since a solution doesn't exist in gmake. So, I don't agree that 100% adherence to backward compatibility is the right solution. Just my opinion. Note, I appreciate your help on this issue and other issues in the past. Thanks, Eric -----Original Message----- From: Paul Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul D. Smith Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 12:27 PM To: Asperheim, Eric Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: repost - target with a colon in the name There is no good way to do this, I'm sorry to say. Unfortunately when GNU make was designed issues of escaping special characters were not widely considered, leading to inconsistencies. I don't know of any way, offhand, to escape a ":" in the prerequisites list. Even more unfortunately, every time I've suggested a syntax change such as allowing escaping of special chars in the prerequisites list with "\", I hear from people who have makefiles that would break. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 _______________________________________________ Help-make mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-make
