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Name

Synopsis

Description

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 \$\({[^}]*}\|[0-9][0-9]+\)

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

Reporting Bugs

Copyright

See Also

info m4

should give you access to the complete manual.

Table of Contents

• Name
• Synopsis
• Description
• Operation modes:
• Preprocessor features:
• Limits control:
• Frozen state files:
• Debugging:
• FLAGS is any of:
• Author
• Reporting Bugs
• Copyright
• See Also