Escaping colons in filenames in a Makefile

Question

Is there a way to get GNU make to work correctly with filenames that contain colons?

The specific problem I\'m running into happens to involve a pattern rule. Here\

Answer 1

The following hack worked for me, though it unfortunately relies on $(shell).

# modify file names immediately
PRE := $(shell rename : @COLON@ *)
# example variables that I need
XDLS = $(wildcard *.xdl)
YYYS = $(patsubst %.xdl,%.yyy,$(XDLS))
# restore file names later
POST = $(shell rename @COLON@ : *)

wrapper: $(YYYS)
    @# restore file names
    $(POST)

$(YYYS):
    @# show file names after $(PRE) renaming but before $(POST) renaming
    @ls

Because PRE is assigned with :=, its associated shell command is run before the XDLS variable is evaluated. The key is to then put the colons back in place after the fact by explicitly invoking $(POST).