James wrote:
> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:07:50 -0800 (PST)
> Received: ... Tue, 04 May 2010 11:41:00 -0400 ... by lists.gnu.org

Wow.  That got hung up in the news system before finally making its
way to the mailing list.

> Before make version 3.81 (3.81beta1, 3.80, 3.79, etc) this used to
> issue an Error, but not in 3.81.
> I'd rather have this give an Error instead of ignoring it.
>
> Is this a bug? or a new feature.

For this specific of a question (and if this is still an issue with
you after the delay) I recommend posting it to the help-make@gnu....
mailing list.  The maintainers answer those types of questions there
every day.  You can browse the help-make mailing list archives here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-make/

Bob