Problems with echo. (echo period)

[Aaron Shatters]

There is a usage of the echo command in the cmd.exe shell that doesn't seem to 
be supported by gnu make.  This is different that all other shell commands in 
that it's arguments are not necessarily separated by whitespace from the 
command.  For example:

@echo.

will print a blank line

@echo.  Hi.

will print "  Hi."

I have seen this used in order to print blank lines, and in order to avoid 
printing "ECHO is off." in the case where they print an empty variable.

@echo $(NONEXISTENT_VARIABLE)

would print "ECHO is off." or "ECHO is on."... but

@echo.$(NONEXISTENT_VARIABLE)

will just print a blank line.

"make" doesn't recognize this as a shell command because the "echo." command is 
not in the shell command list for dos, and furthermore, the arguments are not 
separated from the command by a space or tab.  I have patched the 3.81 source 
code, but I guess that I should get agreement that this needs to be fixed 
before I get to exited.

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