Processing of automake comments

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
        in automake/lib/am/lisp.am, I noticed code like this:

$(am__ELCFILES): elc-stamp
        [...]
          if mkdir elc-lock 2>/dev/null; then \
## This code is being executed by the first process.
            rm -f elc-stamp; \

This motivated me to try this:

foo_rule = echo Refreshing $@ && \
## First, define some variables
        program=`expr '$*' : '.*/\([^/*\)'` && \
## Then run foo
        echo foo && \
        foo $<

I hoped that Automake will strip the ## comments and the rest will be used
to define the variable.  But Automake 1.9.5 failed to do this.  The lines
were spread to different parts of the makefile.

I'm not sure, but the fact that the line

        program=`expr '$*' : '.*/\([^/*\)'` && \

looks as a definition of make variable `program', could have contribute to
the problem.

Could you please fix this?

Thank you for all your work,
        Stepan Kasal