RE: if-conditionals

[Paul D. Smith]

%% <address@hidden> writes:

  af> May I ask a question: don't you think that OR-conditionals and
  af> more string-massaging builtin functions do belong into gmake
  af> (instead of $(shell) hacks), since it already spends some effort
  af> on parsing/massaging text.

The problem is that the world already has MORE than enough scripting
languages, and I see no need to, and have no interest in, invent another
one just for GNU make.  The functions that exist today are intended to
be basic capabilities only.

The plan is that a future version of GNU make will allow you to
integrate Guile as an embedded scripting language for your makefiles:
Guile is more than capable enough to provide all these features.

  af> And why didn't you use lex/yacc for the parser?

Makefile syntax is position-sensitive and isn't really an LALR language.
It's more accurate to say it's a few completely different
syntax/semantic sets, in the same file.

  af> That would help adding missing functions.

Functions are trivial to add; they look like variable references and
have no relationship to, and require no changes in, the parser.

-- 
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