This version of m4 contains a few facilities, that do not exist
in System V m4. These extra facilities are all suppressed by
using the `-G' command line option, unless overridden by other
command line options.
In the $n notation for macro arguments, n can contain
several digits, while the System V m4 only accepts one digit.
This allows macros in GNU m4 to take any number of arguments, and
not only nine (see section Arguments to macros).
Files included with include and sinclude are sought in a
user specified search path, if they are not found in the working
directory. The search path is specified by the `-I' option and the
`M4PATH' environment variable (see section Searching for include files).
Arguments to undivert can be non-numeric, in which case the named
file will be included uninterpreted in the output (see section Undiverting output).
Formatted output is supported through the format builtin, which
is modeled after the C library function printf (see section Formatted output).
The name of the current input file and the current input line number are
accessible through the builtins __file__ and __line__
(see section Printing error messages).
The format of the output from dumpdef and macro tracing can be
controlled with debugmode (see section Controlling debugging output).
The destination of trace and debug output can be controlled with
debugfile (see section Saving debugging output).
In addition to the above extensions, GNU m4 implements the
following command line options: `-F', `-G', `-I',
`-L', `-R', `-V', `-W', `-d',
`-l', `-o' and `-t'. See section Invoking m4, for a
description of these options.
Also, the debugging and tracing facilities in GNU m4 are much
more extensive than in most other versions of m4.
There are a few other incompatibilities between this implementation of
m4, and the System V version.
GNU m4 implements sync lines differently from System V m4,
when text is being diverted. GNU m4 outputs the sync lines when
the text is being diverted, and System V m4 when the diverted
text is being brought back.
The problem is which lines and filenames should be attached to text that
is being, or has been, diverted. System V m4 regards all the
diverted text as being generated by the source line containing the
undivert call, whereas GNU m4 regards the diverted text as
being generated at the time it is diverted.
I expect the sync line option to be used mostly when using m4 as
a front end to a compiler. If a diverted line causes a compiler error,
the error messages should most probably refer to the place where the
diversion were made, and not where it was inserted again.
GNU m4 makes no attempt at prohiting autoreferential definitions
like:
define(`x', `x')
define(`x', `x ')
There is nothing inherently wrong with defining `x' to
return `x'. The wrong thing is to expand `x' unquoted.
In m4, one might use macros to hold strings, as we do for
variables in other programming languages, further checking them with:
ifelse(defn(`holder'), `value', ...)
In cases like this one, an interdiction for a macro to hold its own
name would be a useless limitation. Of course, this leave more rope
for the GNU m4 user to hang himself! Rescanning hangs may be
avoided through careful programming, a little like for endless loops
in traditional programming languages.
GNU m4 without `-G' option will define the macro
__gnu__ to expand to the empty string.
On UNIX systems, GNU m4 without the `-G' option will define
the macro __unix__, otherwise the macro unix. Both will
expand to the empty string.