On Wed, 03 Sep 2003, Simon J. Gerraty wrote:
> I can handle -vV variable, but the output should only vary from -V
> by the fact that the value is expanded else you lose much of the benfit.
> Ie. you'd then need to parse the output rather than being able to just
> foo=`make -vV FOO`

I don't think it would be appropriate for a "verbose" flag to make the
difference between printing the value inexpanded or expanded.  When I
suggested "-v -V FOO", I thought that the output would be for human
consumption.

> >I prefer not to use "-E" (as was suggested in another message), because
> >it seems to be a waste of precious option letters.
> 
> I don't think they are that scarce and -E is reasonably mnemonic.

Fair enough.  In that case, I like "-E" for "evaluate", and I think it
should take arbitrarily complex strings, not just variable names.  For
example (also working in Greg's idea of allowing a target to influence
expansions):

	make -E '${CC} ${CFLAGS.${.TARGET}}' foo.o

--apb (Alan Barrett)