Re: Quoting special characters

[Paul Eggert]

Paul Smith wrote:
> Users can choose whatever SHELL value they want, for example, and I
> certainly would not want to provide a solution that worked only when a
> POSIX-y shell was used.

These days almost nobody (no one?) uses 'make' with a shell that doesn't 
support standard POSIX shell quoting with '.  Do we really need to worry 
about people using the likes of rc for their shell?

It might be better to use a quoting regime that exploits the shell 
rather than an independent quoting regime that operates entirely outside 
the shell.  People who write makefiles need to know the shell quoting 
rules already, so if 'make' uses compatible quoting rules it'd be one 
less thing to learn.

Of course such a regime would need to be designed....