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Make is one of the best tools I've ever come across, but with one big caveat that none of your files must have spaces on their names or all hell breaks loose. S
by haolez 4y ago
Make is one of the best tools I've ever come across, but with one big caveat that none of your files must have spaces on their names or all hell breaks loose. Seems like a reasonable trade off to me :)
- bee_rider 4y agoFiles with spaces in the name are just a bad idea anyhow, Make is just helping out by making the problem more explicit.
- rgoulter 4y agoIIRC, "spaces in file paths breaks programs" is explicitly why Windows uses "Program Files" as its default installation path; so that programs would be written with robustness to that.
- mauvehaus 4y agoAll the world does not speak English: https://www.samlogic.net/articles/program-files-folder-different-languages.htm https://www.samlogic.net/articles/program-files-folder-diffe...
- 3836293648 4y agoWhat is that nonsense? It claims we have localised names in Swedish. I have literally never found a computer that have those. They're always named in English.
- pmarreck 4y ago> Files with spaces in the name are just a bad idea anyhow It's only a bad idea because of assumptions programmers make about file paths not containing spaces that they then build into their code and cause problems. The Mac (and user-friendly file names that contain things like spaces) has been around since 1984. Why has it taken this long to just accept that file paths might contain spaces? Is it just because (essentially) Bash is a huge pain about quoting?
- bee_rider 4y agoRegardless of why or how good it is, people are going to keep making this assumption. Is it really a worthwhile hill to die on?
- pmarreck 4y agoThe only thing keeping people making this assumption is inertia and the only way to change inertia is by leaning into it. I like documents named "Paper about Nietzsche.doc", not "Paper_about_Nietzsche.doc" and directories named "Party Photos" over "Party-Photos" etc. It's about the user aesthetics, not the ease of the coder.
- patrick451 4y agoA better questions is why don't we have a files system that forbids spaces in file names entirely. Then programmers assumptions and reality will match, and much will be simplified.
- pmarreck 3y agoBecause spaces in the names of things are _human_. Would you like to type your full name as Patrick_Lastname everywhere? Or have it canonicalized to that? I'd much prefer if the space was encoded somehow like with URL encoding, or just make underscore and space interchangeable.
- enriquto 4y ago> Files with spaces in the name are just a bad idea Hear, hear! I would love a mount option that disallows them for good (or replaces them transparently by nbsp U+00A0). Do people also want variable names with spaces in their programs? Filenames are variable names, and the file contents are the data that the variable refers to. Allowing spaces in variable names is just brain damage.
- zelphirkalt 4y agoIs this an issue of make, or shell? If we properly quote all variable usage, shouldn't it simply result in quoted values in shell commands, which are then correctly interpreted? Or do you mean when using something with spaces in make in-built functions?
- haolez 4y agoIt's a make limitation when using its native functions. It's very hard to work around this.