NMAKE Help (nmake.hlp) (
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Special Characters as Literals
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The following characters have special meaning for NMAKE:
: ; # ( ) $ ^ \ { } ! @ -
To use one of these characters without its special meaning, place
a caret (^) in front of it. NMAKE ignores carets that precede
any other characters. A caret within a quoted string is treated as
a literal caret character.
You can also use a caret at the end of a line to insert a literal
newline character in a string or macro. The caret tells NMAKE to
interpret the newline character as part of the macro, not a line
break. This differs from using a backslash (\) to continue a line
in a macro definition. A newline character that follows a
backslash is replaced with a space.
See: ◄Defining a Macro►
◄Special Characters in Macros►
In a command, a percent symbol (%) has a special meaning. NMAKE
interprets %s as a filename, and it interprets the characters %|
followed by d, e, f, p, or F as part or all of a filename or path.
To represent these characters literally in a command, specify a
double percent sign (%%) in place of a single one. In all other
situations, NMAKE interprets a single % literally. However, NMAKE
always interprets %% as %. Therefore, to represent %%, you can
specify either %%% or %%%%.
See: ◄Filename-Parts Syntax►
To use the dollar sign ($) as a literal character in a command,
you must specify two dollar signs ($$); this method can also be
used in other situations where ^$ also works.
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