Re: whitespace in filenames

[Brian Dessent]

Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:

> Sorry my spam filter rejected your reply. The IP range you are in
> probably sent us a flurry of spams in the past. Then again, there was no
> need to CC me on the list reply, which I didn't get by the way
> (apparently this list software avoids sending CC'ed posts).

These lists are set up so that when replying you use the mailer's "reply
to all" function which results in a copy going to the list and to the
original author.  This allows someone to post to a list without being
subscribed but still remain part of the thread.  See also
<http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html>.

> OK, this makes sense now. Is the culprit 'shell' or 'patsubst' or both?

It's tempting to try to modify your $(shell) commands so that filenames
with spaces are quoted.  But the problem is that the notion of "list of
words separated by spaces" is deeply ingrained in make, and there's no
quoting that can undo it.  Consider the following example that doesn't
use any functions:

VAR := "foo bar"

all: $(VAR)

If you look at the resulting make -p output you'll see that make thinks
that the 'all' target depends on two targets named '"foo' and 'bar"'. 
The quote characters are not special to make, and there's no way to tell
it that you really meant one word not two.  I really can't think of a
way around this.

Brian