Re: Target specified by an empty variable

[Oleksandr Gavenko]

On 2010.05.17 3:24, Glenn Morris wrote:
> $(foo):
>         @echo foo
>
> My question is, if foo is empty, ie:
>
> foo =
>
> which means that the $(foo) rule has no target (?), is the resulting
> Makefile valid and portable? It seems to work OK with GNU make, but I
> am not sure if I can rely on that.
From info make:

   A "target" is usually the name of a file that is generated by a
program; examples of targets are executable or object files.  A target
can also be the name of an action to carry out, such as `clean'.

So if strlen > 0 - it OK, otherwise GNU Make developer nothing guarantee.

If you run make with empty string target you get error:

 $ LANG=C make ""
make: *** empty string invalid as file name.  Stop.


It likely empty string target incorrect and you
must rewrote build scripts to avoid empty string in target.

--
С уважением, Александр Гавенко.