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

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:05:47 +0100
> From: Tim Murphy <address@hidden>
> Cc: Frank Heckenbach <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> 
> > Then SHELL_QUOTE, whatever its name, is not what you want.  What you
> > want is a way to write an extension (in C or in Guile) that would hook
> > into this expansion, and let you do whatever you need.  IOW, you want
> > to ask for infrastructure that would allow extensions to do things
> > like that (I don't think we have such an infrastructure right, but
> > maybe I'm mistaken).
> 
> Actually I do not want a hook or Guile.

Why not?  That's what these mechanisms were added to Make -- to be
able to extend Make by user-defined code.

> I want to use make's inbuilt capabilities which are already there.

The inbuilt capabilities you allude to are quoting of file names.
What does that have to do with hooks into variable expansion?  Nothing
at all.

> You're suggesting a major new feature where I'm suggesting a slight
> generalisation of one that opens the door to other use cases..

The major new feature is already here: the possibility to extend Make
with C or Guile code.  I'm just suggesting some additional harness to
be able to support what you want.

And as I wrote, I disagree that your suggestion generalizes file-name
quoting.

> > Let's not (ab)use quoting for things it is not supposed to provide and
> > support.
> 
> Abuse in this case just means "a usecase I didn't think of".

No, it means literally "abuse".