Re: inconsistency of 'emptiness'?

[Der Herr Hofrat]

> If forgot to add the following result, when FOO is set in the environment 
> it works as you would hope:
> 
> address@hidden junk]$ export FOO=' '; make
> 
> FOO: origin=environment
> 
> This seems to indicate that the command line behavior is an anomaly/bug.

thats a shell problem not make - do

export FOO=\  ; make 
            ^- there is a blank behind the backslash...  
 or

export FOO=" " ; make

then make will see the " " and pass it on - 

hofrat