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Re:The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects by gdwatson on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @03:04PM (#16486280)
On the command line, using spaces to delimit words is also quite natural; that's why they get used as a delimiter:

    mv old-file new-file
Spaces separate the verb, the direct object, and the indirect object. Using commas or colons instead would painfully artificial.

So the question is whether you will favor naturalness on the command line or in the GUI. It's no surprise that a Unix build tool favors the command line.

Re:The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects by reificator on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @03:19PM (#16486421)
True, but on the command line I don't have to worry about the spaces. I'm just going to tab-complete to simultaneously ensure I'm in the context I expect to be in, ensure I'm not making any typos, and save some time to boot.
Re:The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects by jtolmar on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @11:11PM (#16489608)
What if your file system didn't distinguish between underscores and spaces, your GUI displayed them as spaces, and your command line displayed underscores?

Then this problem goes away entirely and you instead have the problem of not being allowed to have "this_file" and "this file" in the same directory. A problem which probably doesn't matter.

Re:The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects by lucideer on Thursday March 01, 2018 @01:06AM (#16490026)
That hides the problem from the user, and will consequently lead to command line users typing spaces where they should be typing underscores.