Re: bug in the documentation, or ...?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:42:46 -0800 (PST)
> From: nusret <address@hidden>
> 
> && means exactly the same thing on both (see "Command
> Shell Overview"  for XP, on Microsoft site-- google). 

Yes, you are right, sorry.  You learn something new every day.

> Also I would prefer avoiding a cmd.exe replacement if
> I can: As far as windows is concerned, it's just
> another dependency.

For sufficiently sophisticated Makefiles, my experience is that it is
hard to use only those shell features that are supported both by cmd
and sh.  Even redirection will give you trouble if you redirect to
another directory ("> ..\foo" vs "> ../foo"), although in that case
quoting will help.

> On the other hand, make just executes the given shell
> command. I don't know much about make, but I don't see
> how it becomes more portable requiring bash or
> whatever

It becomes more portable, because the commands run the same on all
platforms.  ``Just executing the given shell command'' means that you
need to write the command in the syntax of the shell, and the syntax
is different.

It's the same as with sh vs csh: you cannot easily write a
sufficiently complex Makefile that will do the same with both types of
shell.