The make(1) man page explains (sort of) that "Targets and sources may contain the shell wildcard values.... The value `{}' need not necessarily be used to describe existing files." Eh? Forgive me, but my sh(1) man page doesn't mention {} as a Shell Pattern, or as anything else for that matter. (The term "wildcard" isn't used. Nor is "glob", unfortunately.) I think someone reading the docs should be able to figure things out from first principles: 1. make's man page should say what {} means, and/or 2. sh's man page should say what {} means. Unless I'm overlooking something obvious? I know this works: $ ls dbstream.{h,h.bak} dbstream.h dbstream.h.bak and maybe that's what's meant. But I don't find even that idiom explained in either place. I'd offer a patch except, er, I don't know the answers to my questions. (btw, I was looking for a way to use make to say, "copy any files from dir1 to dir2 where the source file is more recent." No luck so far.) --jkl