I use make for (among other things) transforming files; batch compression being the simplest example, so all one requires is a rule saying %.log.xz : %.log and all is well.

But if people have colons in filenames, for example for timestamps, all bets are off, and make chokes spectacularly.

And that really sucks in Windows because every absolute path contains a colon. Not that absolute paths are common in makefiles, but it's not something that should break on a major platform.