Introduction to make

Introduction to the Unix make utility
Compiling a C program without make
Maintaining text files without make
How make can simplify your work
How to write a Makefile
Additional information
Miscellaneous tips
Maintaining text files without make

Suppose you had a half dozen HTML files, each with the same footer, e.g.:

Suppose those files were called part_1.html, part_2.html, ..., part_6.html. Each time you made a change to the footer, you'd have to edit all six source files — which could get tedious after a while.

Alternatively, you could include the footer in a single file — say, footer.txt — and have everything but the footer in files called part_1.txt, part_2.txt, ..., part_6.txt.

To change the footer, you'd just edit footer.txt, then do:

cat part_1.txt footer.txt > part_1.html
cat part_2.txt footer.txt > part_2.html
...
cat part_6.txt footer.txt > part_6.html