Question

In bash, when I want to iterate in a recursive list of pdf files, without the extension, I could do the following:

for file in `find mypath -type f -name '*.pdf' -printf "%f\n"`
do
    echo "${file%.*}"
done

This works perfectly, and I get a list of the pdf files without the extension.

But if I try to do the same in a Makefile, I get empty output:

my_test:
    @for file in `find mypath -type f -name '*.pdf' -printf "%f\n"`; \
    do \
        echo "${file%.*}"; \
    done; \

do you have an idea why this is happening?
thanks in advance

Answer 1

Just put in an extra $:

echo "$${file%.*}"; \

In your command Make expands the first $, interprets ${ as nothing, and things unravel fast. With $$, the first $ escapes the second and the ${...} gets passed to the shell.