diff --git a/refpolicy/support/set_tunables b/refpolicy/support/set_tunables
index 81b0156e8..0adbc1a5f 100755
--- a/refpolicy/support/set_tunables
+++ b/refpolicy/support/set_tunables
@@ -3,5 +3,6 @@
 # this file exists because this line is
 # too hard to escape correctly in a makefile
 
-egrep -v '^[[:blank:]]*(\#.*)?$' $1 \
-	| awk '{ print "define(`"$1"_conf'\'',`"$3"'\'')" }'
+if test -f $1; then
+	awk -F = '/^[[:blank:]]*[[:alpha:]]+/{ gsub(/[[:blank:]]*/,"") ; print "define(`"$1"_conf'\'',`"$2"'\'')" }' $1
+fi