m4 - Unix, Linux Command

NAME

M4 - manual page for M4 1.4.5

m4 [OPTION]... [FILE]...

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

Tag	Description
--help	display this help and exit
--version
	output version information and exit
-E, --fatal-warnings
	stop execution after first warning
-e, --interactive
	unbuffer output, ignore interrupts
-P, --prefix-builtins
	force a ‘m4_’ prefix to all builtins
-Q, --quiet, --silent
	suppress some warnings for builtins

Tag	Description
-D, --define=NAME[=VALUE]
	enter NAME has having VALUE, or empty
-I, --include=DIRECTORY
	append this directory to include path
-s, --synclines
	generate ‘#line NO "FILE"’ lines
-U, --undefine=NAME
	delete builtin NAME

Tag	Description
-G, --traditional
	suppress all GNU extensions
-H, --hashsize=PRIME
	set symbol lookup hash table size [509]
-L, --nesting-limit=NUMBER
	change artificial nesting limit [1024]

Tag	Description
-F, --freeze-state=FILE
	produce a frozen state on FILE at end
-R, --reload-state=FILE
	reload a frozen state from FILE at start

Tag	Description
-d, --debug[=FLAGS]
	set debug level (no FLAGS implies ‘aeq’)
-l, --arglength=NUM
	restrict macro tracing size
-o, --error-output=FILE
	redirect debug and trace output
-t, --trace=NAME
	trace NAME when it will be defined

Tag	Description
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
V	shorthand for all of the other flags
x	add a unique macro call id, useful with c flag

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

If no FILE or if FILE is ‘-’, standard input is read.

Exit status is 0 for success, 1 for failure, or whatever value was passed to the m4exit macro.

Written by Rene’ Seindal.