Re: escaping bracket in function arguments

[Garrett Cooper]

On Dec 23, 2008, at 6:04, Mayuresh <address@hidden> wrote:

> > On 12/22/08, Mayuresh <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > I am not able to find the right way to escape bracket in  
> > > particular in
> > > the arguments of a function. See example below:
> > >
> > > LIST=a b c
> > > LISTP=$(addprefix "\(", $(LIST))
> > >
> > > all:
> > >     echo $(LISTP)
> > >
> > > I get the error:
> > > makefile:2: *** unterminated call to function `addprefix': missing  
> > > `)'.
> > > Stop.
> > >
> > > I can work around this by defining bracket as a variable and then  
> > > using
> > > it in
> > > place of actual bracket, though it will be nicer if I could escape  
> > > the
> > > bracket directly. Can someone help?
> > >
> > > Mayuresh.
> >
> > Saying something along the lines of ...
> >
> > PAREN :=(
> > LIST :=a b c
> > LISTP := $(addprefix $(PAREN), $(LIST))
> >
> > all:
> > echo "$(LISTP)"
> >
> > ... is probably what you want.
> >
> > 1. Most special characters in GNU Make have to be parametrized and
> > often times $(subst)'ed in place of existing variables.
>
>
> Wonder why some special characters are allowed to be escaped while  
> some others
> are not. For example, I can easily escape # like this:
>
> LIST=a b c
> LISTP=$(addprefix "\#", $(LIST))
>
> all:
>    echo $(LISTP)
>
>
> > 2. Not inserting quotes around the echo string will result in shell
> > syntax failures because `(' is a delimiter in bourne shell.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -Garrett

It's no doubt an issue with how variables and functions are expanded.  
I'm sure Paul could better explain this phenomena.
HTH,
-Garrett