It seems to happen when there aren't blanks earlier in the line.
$ make --version GNU Make 4.3 Built for Windows32 Copyright (C) 1988-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. $ cat tm all: echo 'space before: "xx"' echo 'nospacebefore:"xx"' echo '"xx"' $ make -f tm echo 'space before: "xx"' space before: "xx" echo 'nospacebefore:"xx"' nospacebefore:\xx" echo '"xx"' \xx"
Same version of make works correctly on GNU/Linux (Debian sid).
Thanks.
Sorry, this is not the place for this bug report. Please ignore or delete.