Follow-up Comment #4, bug #59399 (project make): As always I'm ignoring as irrelevant who implemented what first.
Using $< is very trivial. It always expands to the first prerequisite in the rule that contains the recipe. That's true for double-colon rules as well of course. For example: all: foo bar foo: foo: blah foo: biz; : $< bar:: boz yadda; : $< bar:: baz yadda; : $< biz boz baz blah yadda: ;@: will print: : biz : boz : baz Using $* is more complicated but the GNU make manual describes it pretty well I think: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Automatic-Variables.html In an explicit rule, there is no stem; so '$*' cannot be determined in that way. Instead, if the target name ends with a recognized suffix (*note Old-Fashioned Suffix Rules: Suffix Rules.), '$*' is set to the target name minus the suffix. For example, if the target name is 'foo.c', then '$*' is set to 'foo', since '.c' is a suffix. GNU 'make' does this bizarre thing only for compatibility with other implementations of 'make'. You should generally avoid using '$*' except in implicit rules or static pattern rules. If the target name in an explicit rule does not end with a recognized suffix, '$*' is set to the empty string for that rule. This text has not been changed since Roland's 1992 version of the manual. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59399> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/
