I'm using code similar to the following in a Makefile:
empty:=
space:= $(empty) $(empty)
path_escape = $(subst $(space),\$(space),$(1))
TOP=$(call path_escape,$(abspath .))
TARGET=$(TOP)/foo
$(info TOP='$(TOP)')
$(info TARGET='$(TARGET)')
all: $(TARGET)
$(TARGET):
touch '$(notdir $@)'
.PHONY: $(TARGET)
If I use this in a directory with no spaces, say space-test
, it works fine:
$ make
TOP='/tmp/space-test'
TARGET='/tmp/space-test/foo'
touch 'foo'
However, if I use it in a directory with spaces, say space test
, then $(notdir)
does the wrong thing:
TOP='/tmp/space\ test'
TARGET='/tmp/space\ test/foo'
touch 'space foo'
What's happening here is that $(notdir)
interprets /tmp/space test/foo
as two paths and returns the "file part" of both (i.e., space
and foo
). The weird part of this is that TARGET
is properly escaped; somehow, inside the rule or inside $(notdir)
, the backslash escapes are being ignored.
What am I doing wrong here?
$(notdir names …) Extracts all but the directory-part of each file name in names . If the file name contains no slash, it is left unchanged. Otherwise, everything through the last slash is removed from it.
$@ is the name of the target being generated, and $< the first prerequisite (usually a source file). You can find a list of all these special variables in the GNU Make manual.
$(addprefix prefix,names...) The argument names is regarded as a series of names, separated by whitespace; prefix is used as a unit. The value of prefix is prepended to the front of each individual name and the resulting larger names are concatenated with single spaces between them.
The $(notdir)
function in GNU Make takes a list of arguments, separated by spaces. Some functions support escaping spaces with \\
, but $(notdir)
is not one of them.
This should work:
s? = $(subst $(empty) ,?,$1)
?s = $(subst ?, ,$1)
notdirx = $(call ?s,$(notdir $(call s?,$1)))
$(TARGET):
touch '$(call notdirx,$@)'
This defines a "space-safe" version of notdir
called notdirx
. It's quite simple: s?
first turns all spaces to question marks (hoping that they cannot be present in file names), and ?s
converts back. In between we can safely call the original notdir
function.
For an excellent summary on GNU Make and spaces in file names, see GNU Make meets file names with spaces in them.
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