Re: Output quoting (was: Re: Possible solution for special characters in makefile paths)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 12:56:19 +0200
> From: Frank Heckenbach <address@hidden>
> 
> > We've been there during past discussions.  My opinion is: decode the
> > string, and let the user quote it if needed.  This way, rules like this:
> > 
> > >   %.x: %.y
> > >           process '$<' -o '$@'
> > 
> > continue to work (or not ;-) as they did before.
> 
> If we just want to have everything that works to continue working
> and everything that doesn't to continue not working, we don't need
> to change anything. ;)
> 
> As I detailed before, it will be possible for the user to quote
> everything manually (if make's internal functions will support
> multi-word strings), but quite cumbersome, which in practice means
> users won't do it. (I mean, compared to what would be needed in
> make, quoting variables in shell scripts is easy, just add "" around
> your variables, yet I still see so many shell scripts failing to do
> so.)
> 
> So I say if it's left to the user, make should at least provide a
> way to do this automatically and *by default*. Again, see my
> SHELL_QUOTE proposal (which would be automatically applied). If the
> user doesn't want quoting (or needs a different kind of quoting for
> another interpreter), they can unset or change SHELL_QUOTE,
> respectively, but for the normal case (sh-compatible interpreter),
> they shouldn't need to do anything.

Maybe I'm just confused, but I don't see how what you say contradicts
what I said in any way.  Maybe some example will help me see the
light.