Question

I need to create a special makefile rule, which is best explained by an example.
Maybe we create files with the rules

%_test.pdf: %.tex
    pdflatex -jobname=%_test %.tex

%_result.pdf: %.tex
    pdflatex -jobname=%_result %.tex

and it is working fine. Just thinking there occur more templates like those above, one might think of one wildcard-rule like

%_WILDCARD.pdf: %.tex
    pdflatex -jobname=%_$(WILDCARD) %.tex

where WILDCARD is determined by make. Is it possible to build such a rule?

Answer 1

Inspired by the answers of @eldar and @andres I think, I got the solution on myself

.SECONDEXPANSION:
%.pdf: $$(firstword $$(subst _, ,%))
    pdflatex -jobname=$* $+

This does exactly, what I needed. Detailed information for this way may be found at GNU make manual.