FIX: NMAKE File Hangs Machine When Right Parenthesis Missing (59069)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft NMAKE Utility for MS-DOS 1.01
  • Microsoft NMAKE Utility for MS-DOS 1.1
  • Microsoft NMAKE Utility for MS-DOS 1.11
  • Microsoft NMAKE Utility for OS/2 1.11
This article was previously published under Q59069

SYMPTOMS

If you forget the right parenthesis in an IF "$(flag)"=="comparison" line in a makefile and run the makefile through NMAKE, you can receive machine hangs or corrupt COMMAND.COM messages under MS-DOS or an Internal Processing Error under OS/2.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem with the versions of NMAKE listed above. This problem was corrected in NMAKE version 1.12.

MORE INFORMATION

The following makefile, simplified from the sample makefile on Page 172 of the "QuickC ToolKit" manual, demonstrates this problem: 
debug=Y
CC=qcl
!CMDSWITCHES +D
HELLO.EXE : HELLO.OBJ
!IFDEF debug
!   IF "$(debug"=="y"
                LINK /CO hello;
!   ELSE
                LINK hello;
!   ENDIF
!ELSE
!   ERROR Macro named debug is not defined.
!ENDIF
Adding a right parenthesis after "$(debug solves the problem.

The error seems to occur because NMAKE does not recognize the end of the line and continues to parse the line until the end of the file. A customer has reported receiving "U1076, Line too long" messages, followed by a DOS level error reading
Invalid COMMAND.COM - system halted.
Testing the same problem in an MS-DOS window under OS/2 version 1.2 returned Internal Processing Errors and halted the system with no other error messages.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:10/23/2003
Keywords:kb16bitonly kbfix KB59069
©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.