Bug in Make - comments don't work as documented
John M Sellens
jmsellens at watmath.UUCP
Sun Sep 30 05:27:54 AEST 1984
The way make handles comments and the way the documentation says
they are handled are inconsistent.
The documentation says that "all characters after a aharp (#) are ignored,
as is the sharp itself" ('Make - A Program for Maintaining Computer
Programs', S.I. Feldman, page 3, under Description Files and Substitutions).
But - try this as a Makefile:
# This is a comment
all : ; echo hello # This is not a comment
# This is a comment
echo goodbye # This is not a comment either
nothing: # This is a comment
Now, I can see the reason for this, and it would otherwise be impossible
(as near as I can figure out) to get a '#' on a command line. Perhaps
the comment convention should be changed to "lines beginning with a sharp
are ignored" and forget trying to allow trailing comments ...
John M Sellens
UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!jmsellens
CSNET: jmsellens%watmath at waterloo.csnet
ARPA: jmsellens%watmath%waterloo.csnet at csnet-relay.arpa
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