Re: Puzzling $(shell echo *) vs $(wildcard *) in phase 1

[David]

On 2 October 2013 00:35, Paul Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-10-01 at 21:42 +1000, David wrote:
>>
>> Can anyone explain what is happening here?
>
> My suspicion is that this is a result of make's directory caching.  The
> wildcard function reads through the directory cache to get the results
> of the wildcard match.

Thank you very much for your helpful and prompt reply, which cleared
this doubt from stopping my work progressing further.

By the way, my motivation for asking this question is that when seeking
a way to verify my understanding of 'make's evaluation order, I had the
idea to use $(shell touch FLAGFILE).

Then I had the idea to use $(wildcard *) to observe it working! :)

When that didn't work, I was uneasy to apparently encounter another
layer of evaluation order that I did not understand, while I was trying
to understand evaluation order. :)

So having this clarified is the main benefit your reply gives me, even
though my example is not relevant to 'make' doing useful work.

What you say about directory caching makes complete sense in terms
of optimising 'make' to do useful work.