# cmake\_dependent\_option with complex conditionals
**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-dependent-option-with-complex-conditionals/2793
**Category:** Usage
**Created:** [February 17, 2021, 10:06pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-dependent-option-with-complex-conditionals/2793 "2021-02-17T22:06:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@markd](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/markd)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2021, 10:06pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-dependent-option-with-complex-conditionals/2793/1 "2021-02-17T22:06:39Z")
It seems that cmake\_dependent\_option does not work with complex conditionals. For example:
```
OPTION(OPT1 "Option 1" ON)
OPTION(OPT2 "Option 2" ON)
OPTION(OPT3 "Option 3" OFF)
# Complex condition in if statement
IF (OPT1 AND (OPT2 OR OPT3))
MESSAGE("true")
ELSE()
MESSAGE("false")
ENDIF()
# Same condition in CMAKE_DEPENDENT_OPTION doesn't work
CMAKE_DEPENDENT_OPTION(DEP_OPT "dependent option" OFF "OPT1 AND (OPT2 OR OPT3)" OFF)
MESSAGE("DEP OPT = ${DEP_OPT}")
```
The issue is the macro converts each space to a “;” before using the conditional. This step breaks up the complex conditional.
The documentation mentions that “Each element in the fourth parameter is evaluated as an if- condition”.
This implies that more complex conditionals (besides the implicit AND of the list) will not work?
Am I missing some way of constructing the depends argument?
---
### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2021, 1:45pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-dependent-option-with-complex-conditionals/2793/2 "2021-02-18T13:45:12Z")
Hmm. I think I would normally have used `"OPT1;OPT2 OR OPT3"` myself. Maybe it’s the parentheses which confuse things? Does `"OPT1 AND ( OPT2 OR OPT3 )"` work?
---
### Author:  [@markd](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/markd)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2021, 5:16pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-dependent-option-with-complex-conditionals/2793/3 "2021-02-22T17:16:50Z")
Removing the parenthesis, or adding spaces around the parenthesis works. So “OPT1 AND ( OPT2 OR OPT3 )” also works.
The key lines in the cmake\_dependent\_option macro are:
foreach(d ${depends})
string(REGEX REPLACE " +" “;” CMAKE\_DEPENDENT\_OPTION\_DEP “${d}”)
if(${CMAKE\_DEPENDENT\_OPTION\_DEP})
The REGEX effectively tokenizes the line based on spaces. So “OPT1 AND ( OPT2 OR OPT3 )” becomes “OPT1;AND;(;OPT2;OR;OPT3;)”, but the same expression without spaces “OPT1 AND (OPT2 OR OPT3)” becomes “OPT1;AND;(OPT2;OR;OPT3)”
My guess is the “if” statement expects input which is a list to be tokenized properly. In the second case, the parenthesis is not in a list element by itself, and so it is not recognized as a special token.
---
### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2021, 8:16pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-dependent-option-with-complex-conditionals/2793/4 "2021-02-22T20:16:52Z")
Right. I think that makes sense. The way conditional-taking commands work is a bit different, I think, in that they do tokenization on `(` characters. They also “care” about quoting which most other commands just ignore. Maybe all commands do it, but that is likely done before any variable expansion.