Suffix Replacement in Macro References

make provides a mechanism for replacing suffixes of words that occur in the value of the referred-to macro. Although conventional suffixes start with dots, a suffix can consist of any string of characters. A reference of the form:

$(macro:old-suffix=new-suffix)

is a suffix replacement macro reference. You can use such a reference to express the list of object files in terms of the list of sources:

OBJECTS= $(SOURCES:.c=.o)

In this case, make replaces all occurrences of the .c suffix in words within the value with the .o suffix. The substitution is not applied to words that do not end in the suffix given. The following makefile:

SOURCES= main.c data.c moon 
OBJECTS= $(SOURCES:.c=.o) 

all: 
         @echo $(OBJECTS)

offers a simple illustration:

$ make 
main.o data.o moon