Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Text Manipulation with Macros and Functions

Standard versions of make provide a limited text manipulation facility:

$( macro : s1 = s2 )

Evaluates to the current definition of $( macro ), after substituting the string s2 for every occurrence of s1 that occurs either immediately before a blank or tab, or at the end of the macro definition.

GNU make supports this for compatibility with Unix make and the POSIX standard. However, GNU make goes far beyond simple text substitution, providing a host of functions for text manipulation. The following list provides a brief description of each function.

$(addprefixprefix,names ...)

Generates a new list, created by prepending prefix to each of the names.

$(addsuffixsuffix,names ...)

Generates a new list, created by appending suffix to each of the names.

$(basenamenames ...)

Returns a list of the basename of each of the names. The basename is the text up to but not including the final period.

$(callvar,param, ...)

The call function allows you to treat the value of a variable as a procedure. var is the name of a variable, not a variable reference. The params are assigned to temporary variables that may be referenced as $(1), $(2), and so on. $(0) will be the name of the variable. The value of var should reference the temporary values. The result of call is the result of evaluating var in this way. If var names a built-in function, that function is always called, even if a make variable of the same name exists. Finally, call may be used recursively; each ...