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6 <sect1 id="ch-system-m4" xreflabel="M4">
7 <title>M4-&m4-version;</title>
8 <?dbhtml filename="m4.html"?>
10 <indexterm zone="ch-system-m4"><primary sortas="a-M4">M4</primary></indexterm>
12 <para>The M4 package contains a macro processor.</para>
14 <screen>&buildtime; 0.1 SBU
15 &diskspace; 3.0 MB</screen>
17 <para>M4 installation depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC,
18 Gettext, Glibc, Grep, Make, Perl, Sed.</para>
23 <title>Installation of M4</title>
25 <para>Prepare M4 for compilation:</para>
27 <screen><userinput>./configure --prefix=/usr</userinput></screen>
29 <para>Compile the package:</para>
31 <screen><userinput>make</userinput></screen>
33 <para>To test the results, issue:
34 <userinput>make check</userinput>.</para>
36 <para>And install the package:</para>
38 <screen><userinput>make install</userinput></screen>
43 <sect2 id="contents-m4"><title>Contents of M4</title>
45 <para><emphasis>Installed program</emphasis>: m4</para>
49 <sect2><title>Short description</title>
51 <indexterm zone="ch-system-m4 m4"><primary sortas="b-m4">m4</primary></indexterm>
52 <para id="m4"><command>m4</command> copies the given files
53 while expanding the macros that they contain. These macros are either built-in
54 or user-defined and can take any number of arguments. Besides just doing macro
55 expansion, m4 has built-in functions for including named files, running Unix
56 commands, doing integer arithmetic, manipulating text in various ways,
57 recursion, and so on. The m4 program can be used either as a front-end to a
58 compiler or as a macro processor in its own right.</para>