 <p>The percent sign <code>%</code> has special meaning in Makefiles.</p> <p>In order to perform the Windows batch-file substitution, you need to escape it like this:</p> <pre><code>echo %%PATH%% </code></pre> <p>This seems to work too:</p> <pre><code>"echo %%PATH%%" </code></pre> <hr> <p>Another option is to perform the substitution on the Make side, but that's a different thing:</p> <pre><code>echo $(PATH) </code></pre>