Multiple Types of Pattern Matching in Make

[Rahul Rameshbabu]

Hello,

My understanding is that % is a stem pattern matching operation, meaning it
requires at least one character for the pattern match (which makes sense if
there is no suffix). However, I wanted to know if there is a way to pattern
match with empty string given that there is a suffix.

An example is the following situation.

In my filesystem, I have the following files at let's say the same level in
my filesystem for now.

dependencies.config
linux_dependencies.config
windows_dependencies.config

where dependencies.config is a common configuration.

Let's say I write the following Makefile target as an example.

%dependencies.out: %dependencies.config
# Recipe would be here to create the target from the config...

I believe the above would capture 'linux_dependencies.config' and
'windows_dependencies.config' but not 'dependencies.config' since that
would lead to an empty stem. I believe to capture both, a separate rule can
be written for 'dependencies.config'. Not sure if there is a better way to
handle this situation from the Makefile perspective.

It would be interesting if there was some pattern match operator like %%
that can do empty string captures for pattern matching given there is a
non-empty suffix.

Thanks
-- Rahul Rameshbabu