On Thu, 2011-12-15 at 15:13 -0800, Lawrence Ibarria wrote: > This is a rather simple path that implements a very simplified version > of what Tim suggested in his message of Sept 25th > (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-make/2011-09/msg00044.html ). > > Paul, what do you think? I’d rather not try to do everything, just > focus on one thing. I am not sure how much safety checks play a role > inside make.
I was looking at this (and https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?35147) I'm still not in love with it. I have the following concerns: 1. I still think the "a", "w" mode thing is clunky. 2. Unclear what to do about newlines. The code doesn't add any but getting a newline into a make variable is tricky. 3. The suggested patch is really only about 20% of the work: we also need documentation, regression tests, etc. Although I guess doing this before the interface is locked down makes extra work (but not for me! :-)). Here's an alternative suggestion, modeled more on the shell's file redirection rather than the C runtime's stdio: One new function, named "file" (?). The function takes one or two arguments. The first argument is a filename, preceded by a token that specifies how the file is to be treated, with optional whitespace between them. The tokens are: '>' : open the file with mode "w" (truncate) and write the second argument to the file, plus a newline. If no second argument is given, nothing is written (the file will be empty). The expansion of the function is the empty string. '>>' : Open the file with mode "a" (append) and write the second argument to the file, plus a newline. If no second argument is given, nothing is written (if the file didn't exist it will be created but empty; if the file did exist it will be unchanged). The expansion of the function is the empty string. '<' : Open the file with mode "r" and expand to the full contents of the file. No conversion is done (the resulting text may have embedded newlines). Use $(strip ...) to remove them if desired. So, some examples might be: $(file >t.out,this is the first line) $(file >>t.out,this is the second line) $(file >> t.out,this is the third line) FILE := $(file < t.out) Do people think this would be useable? I thought about defining three functions ">", ">>", and "<", rather than "file", but this would require a space between the "function name" and the file name; if you forgot the space (as you can do in the shell) then make would be looking to expand a variable/function named ">t.out" rather than the function ">" with the first argument of "t.out". I just wonder if it would create more issues than it's worth to be cute like that. Still, it's an option. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Smith <psm...@gnu.org> Find some GNU make tips at: http://www.gnu.org http://make.mad-scientist.net "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list Bug-make@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make
