Rational Developer for System z
PL/I for Windows, Version 8.0, Programming Guide

Escape characters

NMAKE uses the following punctuation characters in its syntax:

( ) # $ ^ \
{ } ! @ -  

To use one of these characters in a command and not have it interpreted by NMAKE, use a caret ( ^ ) in front of the character.

For example,

BIG^#.PLI

is treated as

BIG#.PLI

With the caret, you can include a literal newline character in a description file. This capability is useful in macro definitions, as in the following example:

XYZ=abc^<ENTER>
def

The effect is equivalent to the effect of assigning the C-style string abc\ndef to the XYZ macro. Note that this effect differs from the effect of using the backslash ( \ ) to continue a line. A newline character that follows a backslash is replaced with a space.

NMAKE ignores a caret that is not followed by any of the characters it uses in its syntax. A caret that appears within quotation marks is not treated as an escape character.

The escape character cannot be used in the command portion of a dependency block.

Rational Developer for System z
PL/I for Windows, Version 8.0, Programming Guide