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Special Characters in Macros
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Certain characters have special meaning within a macro definition.
To use one of these characters literally, use a special syntax.
In addition to the characters discussed below, other special
characters require special treatment when used literally,
regardless of whether they appear in a macro.
See: ◄Special Characters as Literals►
The following are some of the special syntax rules:
■ To specify a comment with a macro definition, place a number
sign (#) and the comment after the definition, as in:
LINKCMD = link /CO # Prepare for debugging
NMAKE ignores the number sign and all characters up to the
next newline character. To specify a literal number sign in a
macro, use a caret (^), as in ^#.
■ To extend a macro definition to a new line, end the line with
a backslash (\). A newline character that follows a backslash
is replaced with a space when the macro is expanded, as in:
LINKCMD = link myapp\
another, , NUL, mylib, myapp
When LINKCMD is invoked, a space separates myapp and another.
■ To specify a literal backslash at the end of the line,
precede it with a caret (^), as in:
exepath = c:\bin^\
You can also make a backslash literal by following it with a
comment specifier (#). A backslash is literal if it is
followed by any other character.
■ To insert a literal newline character into a macro, end the
line with a caret (^). The caret tells NMAKE to interpret the
newline character as part of the macro, not as a line break
ending the macro definition. For example, to define a macro
composed of two commands separated by a newline character:
CMDS = cls^
dir
This technique is useful when creating inline files.
See: ◄Inline Files►
■ To specify a literal dollar sign ($) in a macro definition,
use two dollar signs ($$). NMAKE interprets a single dollar
sign as the specifier for invoking a macro.
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