Linux cli command m4

➡ A Linux man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation found on Linux and Unix-like operating systems. This man-page explains the command m4 and provides detailed information about the command m4, system calls, library functions, and other aspects of the system, including usage, options, and examples of _. You can access this man page by typing man followed by the m4.

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NAME 🖥️ m4 🖥️

macro processor

SYNOPSIS

m4 [OPTION]… [FILE]…

DESCRIPTION

Process macros in FILEs. If no FILE or if FILE is `-’, standard input is read.

Mandatory or optional arguments to long options are mandatory or optional for short options too.

Operation modes:

–help
display this help and exit

–version
output version information and exit

-E, –fatal-warnings
once: warnings become errors, twice: stop execution at first error

-i, –interactive
unbuffer output, ignore interrupts

-P, –prefix-builtins
force a `m4_’ prefix to all builtins

-Q, –quiet, –silent
suppress some warnings for builtins

–warn-macro-sequence[=REGEXP]
warn if macro definition matches REGEXP,

default \{[^}]*}\[0-9][0-9]+\

-W, –word-regexp=REGEXP
use REGEXP for macro name syntax

Preprocessor features:

-D, –define=NAME[=VALUE]
define NAME as having VALUE, or empty

-I, –include=DIRECTORY
append DIRECTORY to include path

-s, –synclines
generate `#line NUM “FILE”’ lines

-U, –undefine=NAME
undefine NAME

Limits control:

-g, –gnu
override -G to re-enable GNU extensions

-G, –traditional
suppress all GNU extensions

-H, –hashsize=PRIME
set symbol lookup hash table size [509]

-L, –nesting-limit=NUMBER
change nesting limit, 0 for unlimited [0]

Frozen state files:

-F, –freeze-state=FILE
produce a frozen state on FILE at end

-R, –reload-state=FILE
reload a frozen state from FILE at start

Debugging:

-d, –debug[=FLAGS]
set debug level (no FLAGS implies `aeq')

–debugfile[=FILE]
redirect debug and trace output to FILE (default stderr, discard if empty string)

-l, –arglength=NUM
restrict macro tracing size

-t, –trace=NAME
trace NAME when it is defined

FLAGS is any of:

a
show actual arguments

c
show before collect, after collect and after call

e
show expansion

f
say current input file name

i
show changes in input files

l
say current input line number

p
show results of path searches

q
quote values as necessary, with a or e flag

t
trace for all macro calls, not only traceon’ed

x
add a unique macro call id, useful with c flag

V
shorthand for all of the above flags

If defined, the environment variable `M4PATH’ is a colon-separated list of directories included after any specified by `-I'.

Exit status is 0 for success, 1 for failure, 63 for frozen file version mismatch, or whatever value was passed to the m4exit macro.

AUTHOR

Written by Rene’ Seindal.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to: [email protected]
GNU M4 home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO

The full documentation for m4 is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and m4 programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info m4

should give you access to the complete manual.

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