From: tor AT sn DOT no (Tor Sjowall)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Make problem with spaces instead of tabs
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 00:00:25 GMT
Organization: SN Internett
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References: <3288FD63 DOT 2544 AT fab DOT net>
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Eric Christopherson <Draximus AT fab DOT net> wrote:

>I'm sure many of you have got the message from make that there is a
>missing spearator. In most cases that I have seen, this means that a
>statement has spaces in front of it, rather than an actual tab. In my
>experience, if you change the spaces to a tab, make works fine. What I
>want to know is this: is there a version of make that accepts the
>spaces, and/or is there a program to automatically change spaces at the
>beginning of lines to tabs?

If you look in the source for make-3.75, you will find the following:

read.c, line 403:

      if (lb.buffer[0] == '\t')

read.c, line 669:
        
      else if (lb.buffer[0] == '\t')

It is easy to change these lines to check for space in addition to tab.

I'm sure there is some historic argument for insisting on the tabulator as
a prefix to make command lines, but I cannot see any problems with
accepting a space too.

Tor.