M4 (computer language)
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- The correct title of this article is m4. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
m4 is a macro processing language designed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. The name m4 stands for macro, i.e. m plus 4 characters.
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[edit] Use
A macro processor (or a preprocessor) is a text-replacement tool. Its chief use is to re-use text templates, typically in programming applications, but also in text editing, text processing applications.
[edit] History
Macro processors were prevalent when assembly language programming was the common tool of programmers. In these early days of programming, the programmers noted that much of their program was repeated text. Simple means to re-use this text were invented. Programmers soon discovered that it was easier to not only reuse entire blocks of text, but, on occasion, substitute different values for similar parameters. This defined the usage range of macro processors.
M4 was developed in 1977, based on ideas of Christopher Strachey. The distinguishing features of this style of macro preprocessing include the fact that it is free form, not line based (as typical for macro preprocessors designed for assembly language processing) and the high degree of re-expansion (e.g., a macro's arguments are expanded twice, once during scanning and once when they are interpolated). It was the original macro engine used to implement Rational Fortran, and is shipped with most Unix variants. One of the most widespread present-day uses is as part of the GNU Project's autoconf. It is also used in the configuration process of the widespread mail transfer agent sendmail. In general, it is very useful for code generation purposes, owing to its Turing completeness, but can be hard to debug/reverse engineer.
[edit] Features
m4 offers these facilities:
- text replacement
- parameter substitution
- file inclusion
- string manipulation
- conditional evaluation
- arithmetic expressions
- system interface
- programmer diagnostics
Unlike most earlier macro processors, it is not targeted at any particular computer or human language; historically, however, it was developed for supporting the Ratfor dialect of Fortran. Unlike some other macro processors, m4 is Turing-complete as well as a practical programming language.
[edit] Example
The following fragment is a simple example that could be part of an HTML generation library. It defines a macro to number sections automatically:
define(`H2_COUNT', 0) define(`H2', `define(`H2_COUNT', incr(H2_COUNT))' dnl `<h2>H2_COUNT. $1</h2>') H2(First Section) H2(Second Section) H2(Conclusion)
After being processed with m4, the following text will be generated:
<h2>1. First Section</h2> <h2>2. Second Section</h2> <h2>3. Conclusion</h2>
[edit] Free software implementations
There is a GNU version of m4. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD also provide independent implementations of the m4 language. Furthermore, the Heirloom Project Development Tools includes a free version of the m4 language, derived from OpenSolaris.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie. The M4 macro processor. Technical report, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, 1977. pdf
- Kenneth J. Turner. Exploiting the m4 macro language. Technical Report CSM-126, Department of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Scotland, September 1994. pdf
- René Seindal. GNU M4 Manual. GNU Press. 2004. [1]
