How to see built-in rules with nmake?

With GNU make one can say make -npf /dev/null (or on Windows NUL) in order to show the built-in rules. Where -n means --just-print, -p means --print-data-base and -f specifies the make file to use.

How can I achieve the same with nmake?

Solution

The command nmake -p will, when entered in a folder with no makefile, give a list of environment variables, followed by a list of the built-in rules:

INFERENCE RULES:

.asm.obj::
        commands:       $(AS) $(AFLAGS) /c $<

.asm.exe:
        commands:       $(AS) $(AFLAGS) $<

.c.obj::
        commands:       $(CC) $(CFLAGS) /c $<

.c.exe:
        commands:       $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $<

.cc.obj::
        commands:       $(CC) $(CFLAGS) /c $<

.cc.exe:
        commands:       $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $<

.cpp.obj::
        commands:       $(CPP) $(CPPFLAGS) /c $<

.cpp.exe:
        commands:       $(CPP) $(CPPFLAGS) $<

.cxx.obj::
        commands:       $(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) /c $<

.cxx.exe:
        commands:       $(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) $<

.rc.res:
        commands:       $(RC) $(RFLAGS) /r $<

.SUFFIXES: .obj .asm .c .cc .cpp .cxx .f .f90 .for .rc

This is also at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/inference-rules.

See nmake /? for other switches, such as -n. Also see my answer here for some useful references to the older nmake documentation.