Order of hint paths in cmake find_library - cmake

Question

I'm using HINTS with find_library and was surprised to find that the last path had priority. Is this intentional or something that can be configured.
set(MY_HINT_PATHS_A "/path/to/a;/path/to/b")
find_library(MY_LIBRARY_A
NAMES MyLib
HINTS ${MY_HINT_PATHS_A}/lib
ONLY_CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH NO_DEFAULT_PATH
)
set(MY_HINT_PATHS_B "/path/to/b;/path/to/a")
find_library(MY_LIBRARY_B
NAMES MyLib
HINTS ${MY_HINT_PATHS_B}/lib
ONLY_CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH NO_DEFAULT_PATH
)
message("MY_LIBRARY_A: ${MY_LIBRARY_A}")
message("MY_LIBRARY_B: ${MY_LIBRARY_B}")
prints
MY_LIBRARY_A: /path/to/b/lib/libMyLib.a
MY_LIBRARY_B: /path/to/a/lib/libMyLib.a
I would have expected
MY_LIBRARY_A: /path/to/a/lib/libMyLib.a
MY_LIBRARY_B: /path/to/b/lib/libMyLib.a

Answer 1

CMake list is not a type, but an interpretation of string value. So any operations on list-variables are actually operations on strings.
${MY_HINT_PATHS_A}/lib doesn't append /lib to all elements in the list, it appends /lib only to the last element:
"/path/to/b;/path/to/a/lib"
It is absolutely equivalent to appending /lib to the variable's string-value.
For get desired effect you may use lib with PATH_SUFFIXES option to the find_library command. Or directly append /lib suffix to every element in the list.