say I type this in the terminal: “make a_target”
my desired outcome is to have makefile with the following functionality:

TARGET = $(1)

// a varible set to user input, where $(1) is the first argument after the make command I typed in the terminal.

// and of course I want to be able to use the TARGET variable later in my makefile

I saw some solutions to this. one was to type in terminal: “make TARGET=a_target” and have makefile like this:

TARGET=

but I dont want to type TARGET= in the terminal, I only want to write make a_target.

chatgpt gave me this code:

.PHONY: all

# Default target that does nothing
all:
    @echo "Specify a target as 'make <your_input>'"

# Generic rule to handle any target and set the variable
%:
    @$(eval name := $@)
    @echo "Target name is: $(name)"
    @echo "Variable 'name' is set to: $(name)"
    $(MAKE) use_name

.PHONY: use_name
use_name:
    @echo "Using the variable 'name': $(name)"

but i cannot use name as a variable later in the make file.