U1033 Caused by Space After NMAKE Line Continuation Character

ID Number: Q72699

1.00 1.01 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 | 1.01 1.11 1.12 1.13

MS-DOS | OS/2

Summary:

The following error message may be produced by NMAKE if a space is

placed after a line continuation character in a makefile:

fatal error U1033: syntax error : 'string' unexpected

The 'string' is some part of the makefile that NMAKE determines to be

syntactically incorrect. The sample makefile below illustrates this

situation. When processed by NMAKE, this makefile results in the

following error message:

fatal error U1033: syntax error : 'mod3.c' unexpected

This generation of the U1033 error is correct and expected behavior.

The line continuation character must be the last item on the line in

order for it to work correctly; if not, it is taken literally and the

text on the following line is not appended to the current line. Since

the next line does not match NMAKE syntax on its own, the error is

generated.

Sample NMAKE Makefile

---------------------

# the underscore in the next line represents a space

CFILES = mod1.c mod2.c \_

mod3.c