makefile:8: *** missing separator. Stop.

[aurfalien]

Hi all,

First, not being a stranger to lists, I realize this has been covered  
here googleplex times.

I'm trying to run make on some source I dl'd.

I take it the problem lies in my mkfile.c which is pretty long.

I also found this error is probably due to spaces used in place of tabs?

Is it a matter of replacing spaces with tabs in this file?

And which spaces do I replace as I;m sure I shouldn't replace all of  
them.

Thanks in advance.

- aurf


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[Paul Smith-20]

On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 11:47 -0700, aurfalien@... wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> First, not being a stranger to lists, I realize this has been covered  
> here googleplex times.
>
> I'm trying to run make on some source I dl'd.
>
> I take it the problem lies in my mkfile.c which is pretty long.
>
> I also found this error is probably due to spaces used in place of tabs?
>
> Is it a matter of replacing spaces with tabs in this file?
>
> And which spaces do I replace as I;m sure I shouldn't replace all of  
> them.

I don't know what "mkfile.c" is but it sure doesn't sound like a
makefile to me.

The error message you're seeing:

        makefile:8: *** missing separator.  Stop.

tells you the problem is in the file "makefile", line 8.

So, I would look there and replace those spaces with TABs.

Really, you will end up doing this a LOT if your file is corrupted.  It
will almost certainly be faster to try to figure out why/how the file
got corrupted and fix that, rather than fixing the file up after the
fact.

If you really don't want to do that then in general it should be safe
(unless your makefile is REALLY badly written) to replace the first 8
spaces on any line with a TAB.



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[aurfalien]

Thanks Paul.

This thing is weird and since I got it off a BSD ports site and am  
trying to run it on my Centos box, thats probably why.

The file I was trying to recompile is mkfile which I've grown fond of.

It exists on BSD derivatives and Irix which I thought was System 5 but  
not Linux.

Anyways, thanks for the reply.

- aurf


On Oct 5, 2009, at 12:05 PM, Paul Smith wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 11:47 -0700, aurfalien@... wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> First, not being a stranger to lists, I realize this has been covered
>> here googleplex times.
>>
>> I'm trying to run make on some source I dl'd.
>>
>> I take it the problem lies in my mkfile.c which is pretty long.
>>
>> I also found this error is probably due to spaces used in place of  
>> tabs?
>>
>> Is it a matter of replacing spaces with tabs in this file?
>>
>> And which spaces do I replace as I;m sure I shouldn't replace all of
>> them.
>
> I don't know what "mkfile.c" is but it sure doesn't sound like a
> makefile to me.
>
> The error message you're seeing:
>
>        makefile:8: *** missing separator.  Stop.
>
> tells you the problem is in the file "makefile", line 8.
>
> So, I would look there and replace those spaces with TABs.
>
> Really, you will end up doing this a LOT if your file is corrupted.  
> It
> will almost certainly be faster to try to figure out why/how the file
> got corrupted and fix that, rather than fixing the file up after the
> fact.
>
> If you really don't want to do that then in general it should be safe
> (unless your makefile is REALLY badly written) to replace the first 8
> spaces on any line with a TAB.
>

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[Paul Smith-20]

On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 14:54 -0700, aurfalien@... wrote:
> Thanks Paul.
>
> This thing is weird and since I got it off a BSD ports site and am  
> trying to run it on my Centos box, thats probably why.

Most likely it is written for BSD make and there's some feature of BSD
make that makefile uses that GNU make doesn't support.

Without seeing the content of line 8 of the makefile, I can't say for
sure, but as far as I know BSD make also requires a TAB as the first
character.

Also, GNU make tries to be helpful and if it detects a missing separator
on a line that starts with 8 spaces it will add a little note, like
"(did you mean TAB instead of 8 spaces?)"  Since you didn't see that
here, it's most likely something else.

Note that the message "missing separator" is GNU make's version of the
old BASIC "Syntax Error": it means make couldn't even begin to
understand what that line was trying to say.




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