Escape Character

The Make utility uses the following punctuation characters:

( ) # $ ^ \
{ } ! @ -  

To use one of these characters in a command and not have it interpreted by the Make utility, use a caret (^) in front of the character.

For example,

BIG^#.C

is treated as

BIG#.C

With the caret, you can include a literal newline character in a description file. This capability is useful in macro definitions, as in the following example:

XYZ=abc^<ENTER>
def

The effect is equivalent to assigning the C-style string "abc\ndef" to the XYZ macro. Note that this effect differs from the effect of using the backslash (\) to continue a line. A newline character that follows a backslash is replaced with a space.

The Make utility ignores a caret that is not followed by any of the characters it uses in its syntax. A caret that appears within quotation marks is not treated as an escape character.

Note: The escape character cannot be used in the command portion of a dependency block.



Run the Make Utility
Supply input to the Make Utility from the Command Line
Supply input to the Make Utility from a Response File


Make Utility Command Options