GNU m4, version 1.4

A powerful macro processor

Edition 1.4, November 1994

• 1. Introduction and preliminaries
  • 1.1 Introduction to m4
  • 1.2 Historical references
  • 1.3 Invoking m4
  • 1.4 Problems and bugs
  • 1.5 Using this manual
• 2. Lexical and syntactic conventions
  • 2.1 Names
  • 2.2 Quoted strings
  • 2.3 Other tokens
  • 2.4 Comments
• 3. How to invoke macros
  • 3.1 Macro invocation
  • 3.2 Preventing macro invocation
  • 3.3 Macro arguments
  • 3.4 Quoting macro arguments
  • 3.5 Macro expansion
• 4. How to define new macros
  • 4.1 Defining a macro
  • 4.2 Arguments to macros
  • 4.3 Special arguments to macros
  • 4.4 Deleting a macro
  • 4.5 Renaming macros
  • 4.6 Temporarily redefining macros
  • 4.7 Indirect call of macros
  • 4.8 Indirect call of builtins
• 5. Conditionals, loops and recursion
  • 5.1 Testing macro definitions
  • 5.2 Comparing strings
  • 5.3 Loops and recursion
• 6. How to debug macros and input
  • 6.1 Displaying macro definitions
  • 6.2 Tracing macro calls
  • 6.3 Controlling debugging output
  • 6.4 Saving debugging output
• 7. Input control
  • 7.1 Deleting whitespace in input
  • 7.2 Changing the quote characters
  • 7.3 Changing comment delimiters
  • 7.4 Changing the lexical structure of words
  • 7.5 Saving input
• 8. File inclusion
  • 8.1 Including named files
  • 8.2 Searching for include files
• 9. Diverting and undiverting output
  • 9.1 Diverting output
  • 9.2 Undiverting output
  • 9.3 Diversion numbers
  • 9.4 Discarding diverted text
• 10. Macros for text handling
  • 10.1 Calculating length of strings
  • 10.2 Searching for substrings
  • 10.3 Searching for regular expressions
  • 10.4 Extracting substrings
  • 10.5 Translating characters
  • 10.6 Substituting text by regular expression
  • 10.7 Formatted output
• 11. Macros for doing arithmetic
  • 11.1 Decrement and increment operators
  • 11.2 Evaluating integer expressions
• 12. Running UNIX commands
  • 12.1 Executing simple commands
  • 12.2 Reading the output of commands
  • 12.3 Exit codes
  • 12.4 Making names for temporary files
• 13. Miscellaneous builtin macros
  • 13.1 Printing error messages
  • 13.2 Exiting from m4
• 14. Fast loading of frozen states
• 15. Compatibility with other versions of m4
  • 15.1 Extensions in GNU m4
  • 15.2 Facilities in System V m4 not in GNU m4
  • 15.3 Other incompatibilities
• Concept index
• Macro index

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