What type should I use for a list of file or directory paths in CMake?-CodePudding

Cached variables in CMake have one of several types:

Type identifier	Description
`BOOL`	Boolean `ON`/`OFF` value.
`FILEPATH`	Path to a file on disk.
`PATH`	Path to a directory on disk.
`STRING`	A line of text.
`INTERNAL`	A line of text. `cmake-gui` does not show internal entries. They may be used to store variables persistently across runs.

If I want to store a CMake-style^* list of file paths or directory paths, should I define it as FILEPATH or PATH, respectively? As a STRING?

_{* - i.e. represented in a semicolon-separated string.}

CodePudding user response：

FILEPATH and PATH are suitable only for a single path. E.g. when a user fills parameters of one of these types, CMake GUI provides a path-selection dialog.

For the list of paths use STRING parameter.

In case you will use non-semicolon separator between paths, you will need to convert that separator to semicolon before use that list in CMakeLists.txt. E.g. you could choose a colon (:) to be used a separator, like for the PATH variable on Linux.