Unterminated string error

[John Alvord]

This is a gnu make 3.79.1, freshly gotten from the archives - date was
June 2000 if I remember. I am work on upgrading from 3.75 to 3.79.1.
There were a few small repairs needed, but it mostly looks OK.
This is on NT 4, using sh.exe for a command shell.

Given the following makefile

test:
        echo "* "

That is an asterisk followed by a blank. I am getting "Syntax error:
unterminated quoted string" display immediated after the echo. If I
leave off the trailing blank...

test:
        echo "*"

There is no error message produced.

This problem was not observed on 3.75.

I tried using bugs.gnu.org but couldn't get it to return anything from
the queries.

Has anyone else seen this?

john alvord