Makefile dir function doesn't expand as expected in for loop - makefile

Question

I want to iterate through a list of files, execute cd in their respective directories before executing a command.
So I would like to use $(dir $(FILES)) function to get the directory, but it seems not to work properly in the for loop.
FILES=../dir1/file1 ../dir2/file2
.PHONY: all
all:
#for f in $(FILES); do \
echo $$f in $(dir $${f}) ; \
done
outputs
../dir1/file1 in ./
../dir2/file2 in ./
The $(dir $${f}) gets expanded to ./ instead of ../dirN.
Note :
Writing only echo $(dir $(FILES)) outside of the for loop outputs ../dir1/ ../dir2/ as expected.
using $(abspath ...) doesn't work either.
What am I missing ?

Answer 1

You are mixing make constructs (dir) and shell constructs. Unfortunately they are not evaluated at the same time. Make evaluates its constructs before passing the recipe to the shell, once for all, not during the execution of the recipe by the shell. When expanding your recipe (before passing it to the shell) it transforms it into:
for f in ../dir1/file1 ../dir2/file2; do echo $f in ./; done
because when make expands $(dir $${f}) it first expands the parameter:
$(dir ${f})
and then, as there is no / in the string ${f}, the expansion of the dir function replaces it with ./. From the GNU make manual:
$(dir names…)
Extracts the directory-part of each file name in names. The directory-part of the file name is everything up through (and
including) the last slash in it. If the file name contains no slash,
the directory part is the string ./. For example,
$(dir src/foo.c hacks)
produces the result src/ ./.
Anyway, mixing make and shell constructs is usually not what you want to do (there are exceptions). You could use only shell constructs:
all:
#for f in $(FILES); do \
echo $$f in $$(dirname $$f) ; \
done
Or you could use a static pattern rule to get completely rid of the shell loop and let make iterate over a list of similar targets:
FILES = ../dir1/file1 ../dir2/file2
FOOS = $(addsuffix .foo,$(FILES))
.PHONY: all $(FOOS)
all: $(FOOS)
$(FOOS): %.foo:
#echo $* in $(dir $*)