This is either a bug in how the patsubst function works in GNU Make
3.79, or a bug in the documentation for same:
% make --version
GNU Make version 3.79, by Richard Stallman and Roland McGrath.
Built for alphaev56-dec-osf4.0e
Copyright (C) 1988, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Report bugs to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
% cat patsubst.makefile
dirs := a b c
files := $(patsubst %, ../%/%.gfa, $(dirs))
.PHONY : gfa
gfa :
@echo $(files)
% make -f patsubst.makefile gfa
../a/%.gfa ../b/%.gfa ../c/%.gfa
%
I was expecting the output
../a/a.gfa ../b/b.gfa ../c/c.gfa
The GNU Make 3.79 info file says
> `$(patsubst PATTERN,REPLACEMENT,TEXT)'
> Finds whitespace-separated words in TEXT that match PATTERN and
> replaces them with REPLACEMENT. Here PATTERN may contain a `%'
> which acts as a wildcard, matching any number of any characters
> within a word. If REPLACEMENT also contains a `%', the `%' is
> replaced by the text that matched the `%' in PATTERN.
but it doesn't say what happens if there are multiple `%' characters
in REPLACEMENT. In my opinion the "right" behavior would be to substitute
all of them, but it appears Make only substitutes the first.
If the only-substitute-the-first behavior is indeed "correct", then
I'd suggest the info file have a note added to document this.
--
-- Jonathan Thornburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.thp.univie.ac.at/~jthorn/home.html
Universitaet Wien (Vienna, Austria) / Institut fuer Theoretische Physik
[visiting Albert Einstein Institute (Golm, Germany) until Sept 10]
"I've come to believe that my mother was unexpectedly startled by the
suggestion of a new keyword during her first pregnancy, and when a tempter
in the early 1970s formulated schemes to avoid another one, the prenatal
influence manifested itself." -- Dennis Ritchie in comp.std.c, explaining
why C overloads keywords (eg "extern", "static") with multiple meanings
