RE: Excessive $(strip)

[Martin Dorey]

> I'd say that make itself is sloppy wrt whitespace, where sometimes
> newlines are considered to be whitespace, othertimes not.
...
> the "word" family of functions do not.

Nice example.  The source seems to draw a distinction between isblank, 
terminology available, I learn, in C99, and the more familiar isspace.  The 
word "blanks" is used in the documentation, but not as frequently as the source 
suggests and not, afaics, in relation to the "words" function.  I retract my 
previous suggested patch in favor of this.  It doesn't go nearly far enough, 
but verifying each mention of whitespace now looks like more than I'd bargained 
for.

address@hidden:~/download/make-git/make$ git diff
diff --git a/doc/make.texi b/doc/make.texi
index 8fbdb61..2932c03 100644
--- a/doc/make.texi
+++ b/doc/make.texi
@@ -1173,9 +1173,9 @@ include @address@hidden
 Extra spaces are allowed and ignored at the beginning of the line, but
 the first character must not be a tab (or the value of
 @code{.RECIPEPREFIX})---if the line begins with a tab, it will be
-considered a recipe line.  Whitespace is required between
+considered a recipe line.  At least one blank is required between
 @code{include} and the file names, and between file names; extra
-whitespace is ignored there and at the end of the directive.  A
+blanks are ignored there and at the end of the directive.  A
 comment starting with @samp{#} is allowed at the end of the line.  If
 the file names contain any variable or function references, they are
 expanded.  @xref{Using Variables, ,How to Use Variables}.
@@ -7522,7 +7522,7 @@ $(file @var{op} @var{filename},@var{text})
 The operator @var{op} can be either @code{>} which indicates overwrite
 mode, or @code{>>} which indicates append mode.  The @var{filename}
 indicates the file to be written to.  There may optionally be
-whitespace between the operator and the file name.
+blanks between the operator and the file name.
 
 When the @code{file} function is expanded all its arguments are
 expanded first, then the file indicated by @var{filename} will be
address@hidden:~/download/make-git/make$