%% mst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: m> How about a way to call "system" without catching stdout, let m> stdout be copied as is to the child process?
>> Hmm. Maybe. I still don't know that it's that useful. m> I know I wanted to get the exit status of the program into a m> variable many times. This would be possible: While not saying I think a $(system ...) function is not useful (I still have this under advisement), I will say that the examples you give are already fairly easily done: m> ifeq ($(system test -e filename),0) m> --FILE exists m> else m> --FILE does not exist m> endif This is much more efficiently done with the $(wildcard) function: ifneq ($(wildcard filename),) --FILE exists else --FILE does not exist endif Avoids a shell invocation, test invocation, etc. m> Another example: print date to stdout while makefile is evaluated: m> dummy:=$(shell date) Yes; you can do this but it's a big more ugly: dummy := $(shell date 1>&2) also the result goes to STDERR instead of STDOUT, which might not be what you wanted. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make