shells inside Makefiles

[Seth Teller]

someone (can't remember who) posted a question about shell constructs
inside makefiles, and someone else (can't remember who that was, either)
answered something about complicated things not being possible...

well, although it's ugly, you can do anything inside a makefile.  
here's a while loop, all one line (sorry it's so long):

NAME=tog
FIRSTPAGE=1
LASTPAGE=50
SKIPPAGE=2
EJECTPAGE=3
PRINTER=uni

syncprintR:
	    firstpage=$(FIRSTPAGE) ; \
	    lastpage=$(LASTPAGE) ; \
	    skippage=$(SKIPPAGE) ; \
	    numbytes=0 ;\
	    totalbytes=0 ;\
	    page=$$lastpage ; \
	    while [ `expr \( $$page \>= $$firstpage \& $$page \<= $$lastpage \) \| \( $$page \>= $$lastpage \& $$page \<= $$firstpage \)` = 1 ] ; do \
		echo printing page $$page of \[$$firstpage .. $$lastpage\] ; \
		echo "dvi2ps -f $$page -t $$page $(NAME).dvi > $(NAME).$$page.ps" ; \
		dvi2ps -f $$page -t $$page $(NAME).dvi > $(NAME).$$page.ps ; \
		numbytes=`ls -l $(NAME).$$page.ps | awk '{print $$4}'` ; \
		totalbytes=`expr $$totalbytes + $$numbytes`; \
		echo "bin/syncprint $(NAME).$$page.ps $(PRINTER) ($$numbytes bytes; $$totalbytes total)" ;   \
		bin/syncprint $(NAME).$$page.ps $(PRINTER) ;   \
		echo "/bin/rm -f $(NAME).$$page.ps" ; \
		/bin/rm -f $(NAME).$$page.ps ; \
		page=`expr $$page - $$skippage` ; \
	    done ; \
	    echo "printed $$totalbytes bytes total."

this example loops, uses shell variables, does expression evaluation,
and passes make variables to shell commands.  like i said, it's not 
pretty.  in particular, notice the weirdness with $, $(), and $$.

do your worst--

seth