Word Unexpected (expecting ")") with Makefile

Question

I'm making a makefile and I'm working on a target with no dependencies that checks to see if a file named README exists in the current directory and if it does, read it using less or else exit quitely: give no errors whatsoever--the command to run the target should print nothing to console if this is the case.

I've tried a couple different ways but nothing really seems to work (PAGER is simply a var equal to less):

read :
   ifneq ("$(wildcard README)","")
      -@$(PAGER) README
   endif

And also with this code

read :
   -@for file in *;\
   do \
       if [ ${file} == "README" ]; then\
           $(PAGER) "README" ;\
       fi;\
   done

With the first chunk I keep getting an error akin to /bin/sh: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")") and for the life of me I just don't get what it's saying. I certainly don't think there's a syntax error, perhaps I'm misusing make.

For the latter code I get an unexpected operator error for the ==.

I've also tried simpler things like these two single liner solutions but get similar errors:

-@test -a README && less README
-@[ -a README ] && less README

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I was digging further and saw something promising and explicitly setting my shell to /bin/bash (SHELL := /bin/bash) yet no dice.

@Luboš Turek before removing tags, you should check their wiki about how it is used. It currently mentions the usage of `less` as a UNIX command. See http://stackoverflow.com/tags/less/info — fedorqui, May 03 '17 at 08:17

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 20 '12 at 06:14

1

You should try to extract your shell code in separate *.sh files so that you can specify them as commands in your makefile (and make sure that the *.sh files are executable).

answered Apr 20 '12 at 06:14

npclaudiu

2,401
1
18
19

that's a great idea. I'll give it a shot. – Wuzseen Apr 20 '12 at 06:23
Beta provided me with an answer to resolve it within the makefile, but this is pretty creative. It may be against the rules for the assignment, however. – Wuzseen Apr 20 '12 at 06:34

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 20 '12 at 06:23

1

read:
        @if [ -e README ]; then less README; fi

answered Apr 20 '12 at 06:23

Beta

96,650
16
149
150

This solves it. I'm sort of curious as to why what I did was throwing issues. It seems functionally identical to me, but the == operator is apparently not digested similarly. – Wuzseen Apr 20 '12 at 06:29
`[` is just the command `test`. And `test` uses the `=` operator for equality comparison, not `==`. – Michael Wild Apr 20 '12 at 06:37
@Wuzseen, your first solution works for me without error, but says there's nothing to be done for the target when README does not exist (there's a way to fix that). Your second solution works if you double the '$' (`$` => `$$`) because otherwise Make interprets `${` as nothing and it all falls apart. Your third and fourth don't work, and shouldn't. – Beta Apr 20 '12 at 06:48
@Wuzseen: Recipes are executed by your shell (probably /bin/sh) and it's the shell that's throwing the syntax error. – reinierpost Apr 20 '12 at 14:11

Word Unexpected (expecting ")") with Makefile

2 Answers2