order of evaluation

[Dan DeJohn]

After reading the manual section "How make Reads a Makefile" I am still 
missing something.

In the list of commands for a rule, I want to execute a particular 
command (mv a file) only if one of the previous commands created the file.

In my sample, I use "touch" (which, unlike my real command, always 
creates the file). I'd expect the following to print "Xxxx.abcX" and 
"YES" in every case, but it always prints "XX" and "NO" unless xxx.abc 
exists prior to running gnumake. So clearly the $(if . . .) is being 
evaluated before the touch is executed. I don't understand why, and 
don't know how to get the proper conditional execution of my mv command.

makefile:

all:
   touch xxx.abc
   echo X$(wildcard *.abc)X
   $(if $(wildcard *.abc), @echo YES, @echo NO)


execution:

% /bin/rm xxx.abc
% make all
touch xxx.abc
echo XX
XX
NO
% make all
touch xxx.abc
echo Xxxx.abcX
Xxxx.abcX
YES

--
Dan DeJohn
address@hidden