Make - How to fix *** missing separator. Stop.

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When you got:

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Makefile:2: *** missing separator.  Stop.

or

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* missing separator (did you mean TAB instead of 8 spaces?). Stop.

It’s easy to fix it. Use Tab instead of space in your Makefile.

You can fix it by changing Spaces to Tab characters. Simply open your Makefile

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$ vim Makefile

And then run the following command within:

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:%s/^[ ]\+/^I/

This will substitute all the lines begin with one or more Spaces character with an actual Tab.