RE: why does command echo \\\foobar print \\foobar

[Mark Galeck (CW)]

OK, so let me hazard a "rule".  With GNU make on Windows, in the middle of a 
rule command, and when the command is not "built-in", then "\" is an escape 
character.  In particular, when parsing left-to-right,  "\\" will escape itself 
and pass "\".  However, to be compatible with Windows paths, "\" will not 
escape the next character, if it could be the beginning of a file or directory 
name, so "\foobar" will pass "foobar".  

(Now this still leaves us what happens when the next character is not \ and not 
a beginning of a filename, but that is of no concern  to me right now)

Does this sound about right and can I expect this rule should always work?  

>It does that only when it does not invoke builtin commands.