What is the meaning of a double dollar sign in bash/Makefile?

Question

When inserting a shell script inside a Makefile we have (?) to use a double dollar sign ($$) to make reference to variables. Why is that so?

for number in 1 2 3 4 ; do \     echo $$number ; \ done 

Answer 1

As per gnu make official doc:

Variable and function references in recipes have identical syntax and semantics to references elsewhere in the makefile. They also have the same quoting rules: if you want a dollar sign to appear in your recipe, you must double it (‘$$’). For shells like the default shell, that use dollar signs to introduce variables, it’s important to keep clear in your mind whether the variable you want to reference is a make variable (use a single dollar sign) or a shell variable (use two dollar signs).

So in short:

• makefile variable => use a single dollar sign
• shell variable => use two dollar signs