NMAKE uses the following punctuation characters in its syntax:
┌──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┐
│( │) │# │$ │^ │\ │
├──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┤
│{ │} │! │@ │- │ │
└──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┴──────┘
To use one of these characters in a command and not have it interpreted by NMAKE, use a caret ( ^ ) in front of the character.
For example,
BIG^#.C
is treated as
BIG#.C
With the caret, you can include a literal newline character in a description file. This capability is useful in macro definitions, as in the following example:
XYZ=abc^<ENTER> def
The effect is equivalent to assigning the C-style string "abc\ndef" to the XYZ macro. Note that this effect differs from the effect of using the backslash ( \ ) to continue a line. A newline character that follows a backslash is replaced with a space.
NMAKE ignores a caret that is not followed by any of the characters it uses in its syntax. A caret that appears within quotation marks is not treated as an escape character.
Note: The escape character cannot be used in the command portion of a dependency block.