Date:	Wed, 28 Apr 1999 10:33:26 +0300 (IDT)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender:	eliz AT is
To:	Endlisnis <s257m AT unb DOT ca>
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Why are tabs required in makefiles?
In-Reply-To:	<3725EF85.F7A71454@unb.ca>
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Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Endlisnis wrote:

>     But would you ever use a ";" at the beginning of the command line?

We are talking about a way to *know* that ";" begins a command.  So
the right question is ``would I ever use ";" at the beginning of
something that is NOT a command?''  Since ";" is also used to separate
multiple directives in a Makefile, I guess we cannot use it in this
context.

To say nothing of the fact that the Posix standard should be changed
for this to be used.

Anyway, even if we did use ";", it won't help people who edit working
Makefile's and have the TABs silently converted to spaces by their
editor.

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