String defines with spaces (shell prob?)

Consider this code:
Quote:

How do I define PRINTSTRING to something containing a space, through the command line?

This is the generally accepted method:
gcc -o test test.c -DPRINTSTRING=""test 2""
or this:
gcc -o test test.c -DPRINTSTRING='"test 2"'

Neither work with our Shell (I've tried *" as well). What is the correct method?

gcc -o test test.c -DPRINTSTRING="test\ 2"

Appears to have the desired effect on the amiga shell. (I'm not really that familar with quoting rules in amiga shell, and worked that out by experimenatation)

In /bin/sh, you might do:

gcc -o test test.c -DPRINTSTRING=""test 2""

(EDIT: It seems this forum software has a bug. I had to double backslash here to get the right text in the post!)

In this case, the outter backslashed double quote prevents the shell from splitting the content across two arguments and the inner quote satisfies the C source.

I actually prefer the amiga shell rules here, but it fails under /bin/sh because the quoting causes the baskslashed space to be a litteral backslash followed by a space, thus splitting the argument.

Clearly quoting and escaping rules are for massocists.

Lawrence

Yes, the backslash-space thing works! Thanks!

The weird thing is, I'm using this via a makefile and gmake, which I thought was supposed to spawn sh for each command. Clearly it doesn't. A combination of \""\\ "\" is working, even if it does look ridiculous (not sure if the \" are strictly necessary but they're not harming anything so I'm happy to leave them in)

I hadn't noticed my backslashes had been stripped out of my initial post, I did type them, honest!