As part of a long, sordid story whose end goal is simply to get GMP installed for use with code::blocks in Windows, I am trying to configure gmp. I do this with the following command: ./configur...

I'm using m4 to create some basic macros and I realize that when using esyscmd there's a trailing new line added to a string when the command is run. Example: define(MY_HOSTNAME, esyscmd(`hostnam...

I want to include a file and have all the lines indented. I want it to be a code block in a markdown document. Basically I want something like this: text include(somefile) text to have this out...

How can I assign a dynamic, git-based version number to an autoconf project? Autoconf requires a static string argument to AC_INIT([Title],[version],[name]) AC_INIT documentation says that one c...

I have Xcode 3.2 installed into /Xcode3.2, and did not install anything into /Developer. When I wish to do development, I start up a shell as follows alias sysroot='PATH=${PATH}:${XCODE}/usr/bin C...

I have some trouble on getting custom selinux policies running properly on an AOSP based Android 7.1.2 (more precisely based on sony open devices tree). My problem is that the audit logs keep tell...

I am distributing a tarball with installation scripts generated by autoconf version 2.69. Works fine on many different machines. Now a user, working on a fresh Arch Linux system, reports that confi...

Does someone know of any uses of m4 besides autoconf (preferably in a c or c++ environment) that is more than just an academic excerise, because it helped solve a problem that would otherwise...

I would be great doing things like <define tag="myTag" options="3"> <h1> #1 </h1> <ul> <li> #2 <li> #3 </ul> </define> and then use it: <m...

we're developing a software package that uses autotools (autoconf 2.69 and automake 1.13.3 to be precise). This package needs wxwidgets and this library provides its own m4 file to allow testing th...

A simple GNU m4 question, but I cannot find the correct answer. I'd like to print a markdown header starting/ending a code section: ``` echo Hello ``` How do I create a GNU M4 macro containing t...

I am writing a pre-processor for Free-Pascal (Course Work) using m4. I was reading the thread at stackoverflow here and from there reached a blog which essentially shows the basic usage of m4 for p...

Is there a good way to uniformly indent a block of text in an m4 macro? In other words, the macro define(`mytext',dnl This is a piece of text that I would like to indent) mytext generates This ...

problem I'm using LilyPond to typeset sheet music for a church choir to perform. Depending on who is available on any given week, songs will be played in various keys. We have an amazing pianist w...

How can I strip empty lines (surplus empy lines) from an input file using M4? I know I can append dnl to the end of each line of my script to suppress the newline output, but the blank lines I mea...

The autoconf manual suggest using AS_IF instead of if, but it doesn't mention m4_if. Should AS_IF also be preferred over m4_if? The "Limitations of Builtins" section of the manual says to use AS_I...

The following code from my configuration.ac file does not work (note the nested square brackets with [default=no]): AC_ARG_ENABLE(debug, [ --enable-debug build with debugging support [default=no]...

I know all of the philosophical arguments against preprocessors and macros in Java. I don't agree that just because some may abuse a language feature, it should be excluded for all. I would like t...

Is there a way to use m4 macros when developing in Java for Eclipse, ie. making sure the preprocessor is automatically invoked before Eclipse compiles? Or has anyone used another preprocessor succ...

I am trying to craft a macro replacing newlines. My first try was: define(`m4_pascal_str',` patsubst(`$1',`^\(.*\)$',`\1++') ') m4_pascal_str(` 11 22 33 44 ') define(zz,` 11 22 33 44 ') m...

How can I tell m4's patsubstr to replace all newlines in a string with a space? I've tried: patsubst(MULTI_LINE_STR_DEFINE,`\n',` ') and patsubst(MULTI_LINE_STR_DEFINE,`\\n',` ')