21.1 What does M4 do?
m4 is a general purpose tool suitable for all kinds of text
processing applications--not unlike the C preprocessor, cpp ,
with which you are probably familiar. Its obvious application is as a
front-end for a compiler---m4 is in many ways superior to
cpp .
Briefly, m4 reads text from the input and writes processed
text to the output. Symbolic macros may be defined which have
replacement text. As macro invocations are encountered in the input,
they are replaced (`expanded') with the macro's definition. Macros
may be defined with a set of parameters and the definition can specify
where the actual parameters will appear in the expansion. These
concepts will be elaborated on in 21.3 Fundamentals of M4 processing.
M4 includes a set of pre-defined macros that make it
substantially more useful. The most important ones will be discussed in
21.4 Features of M4. These macros perform functions such as
arithmetic, conditional expansion, string manipulation and running
external shell commands.
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