3. How to invoke macros

This chapter covers macro invocation, macro arguments and how macro expansion is treated.

3.1 Macro invocation

Macro invocations has one of the forms

name

which is a macro invocation without any arguments, or

name(arg1, arg2, …, argn)

which is a macro invocation with n arguments. Macros can have any number of arguments. All arguments are strings, but different macros might interpret the arguments in different ways.

The opening parenthesis must follow the name directly, with no spaces in between. If it does not, the macro is called with no arguments at all.

For a macro call to have no arguments, the parentheses must be left out. The macro call

name()

is a macro call with one argument, which is the empty string, not a call with no arguments.

3.2 Preventing macro invocation

An innovation of the m4 language, compared to some of its predecessors (like Stratchey's GPM, for example), is the ability to recognize macro calls without resorting to any special, prefixed invocation character. While generally useful, this feature might sometimes be the source of spurious, unwanted macro calls. So, GNU m4 offers several mechanisms or techniques for inhibiting the recognition of names as macro calls.

First of all, many builtin macros cannot meaningfully be called without arguments. For any of these macros, whenever an opening parenthesis does not immediately follow their name, the builtin macro call is not triggered. This solves the most usual cases, like for `include' or `eval'. Later in this document, the sentence "This macro is recognized only with parameters" refers to this specific provision.

There is also a command line option (`--prefix-builtins', or `-P', see section Invoking m4) which requires all builtin macro names to be prefixed by `m4_' for them to be recognized. The option has no effect whatsoever on user defined macros. For example, with this option, one has to write m4_dnl and even m4_m4exit.

Another alternative is to redefine problematic macros to a name less likely to cause conflicts, See section How to define new macros.

If your version of GNU m4 has the changeword feature compiled in, it offers far more flexibility in specifying the syntax of macro names, both builtin or user-defined. See section Changing the lexical structure of words, for more information on this experimental feature.

Of course, the simplest way to prevent a name from being interpreted as a call to an existing macro is to quote it. The remainder of this section studies a little more deeply how quoting affects macro invocation, and how quoting can be used to inhibit macro invocation.

Even if quoting is usually done over the whole macro name, it can also be done over only a few characters of this name (provided, of course, that the unquoted portions are not also a macro). It is also possible to quote the empty string, but this works only inside the name. For example:

`divert'
⇒divert
`d'ivert
⇒divert
di`ver't
⇒divert
div`'ert
⇒divert

all yield the string `divert'. While in both:

`'divert
⇒
divert`'
⇒

the divert builtin macro will be called, which expands to the empty string.

The output of macro evaluations is always rescanned. The following example would yield the string `de', exactly as if m4 has been given `substr(`abcde', `3', `2')' as input:

define(`x', `substr(ab')
⇒
define(`y', `cde, `3', `2')')
⇒
x`'y
⇒de

Unquoted strings on either side of a quoted string are subject to being recognized as macro names. In the following example, quoting the empty string allows for the second macro to be recognized as such:

define(`macro', `m')
⇒
macro(`m')macro
⇒mmacro
macro(`m')`'macro
⇒mm

Quoting may prevent recognizing as a macro name the concatenation of a macro expansion with the surrounding characters. In this example:

define(`macro', `di$1')
⇒
macro(`v')`ert'
⇒divert
macro(`v')ert
⇒

the input will produce the string `divert'. When the quotes were removed, the divert builtin was called instead.

3.3 Macro arguments

When a name is seen, and it has a macro definition, it will be expanded as a macro.

If the name is followed by an opening parenthesis, the arguments will be collected before the macro is called. If too few arguments are supplied, the missing arguments are taken to be the empty string. However, some builtins are documented to behave differently for a missing optional argument than for an explicit empty string. If there are too many arguments, the excess arguments are ignored. Unquoted leading whitespace is stripped off all arguments.

Normally m4 will issue warnings if a builtin macro is called with an inappropriate number of arguments, but it can be suppressed with the `-Q' command line option (see section Invoking m4). For user defined macros, there is no check of the number of arguments given.

Macros are expanded normally during argument collection, and whatever commas, quotes and parentheses that might show up in the resulting expanded text will serve to define the arguments as well. Thus, if foo expands to `, b, c', the macro call

bar(a foo, d)

is a macro call with four arguments, which are `a ', `b', `c' and `d'. To understand why the first argument contains whitespace, remember that leading unquoted whitespace is never part of an argument, but trailing whitespace always is.

It is possible for a macro's definition to change during argument collection, in which case the expansion uses the definition that was in effect at the time the opening `(' was seen.

define(`f', `1')
⇒
f(define(`f', `2'))
⇒1
f
⇒2

It is an error if the end of file occurs while collecting arguments.

define(
^D
error-->m4:stdin:1: ERROR: end of file in argument list

3.4 Quoting macro arguments

Each argument has leading unquoted whitespace removed. Within each argument, all unquoted parentheses must match. For example, if foo is a macro,

foo(() (`(') `(')

is a macro call, with one argument, whose value is `() (() ('. Commas separate arguments, except when they occur inside quotes, comments, or unquoted parentheses, See section Special arguments to macros, for examples.

It is common practice to quote all arguments to macros, unless you are sure you want the arguments expanded. Thus, in the above example with the parentheses, the `right' way to do it is like this:

foo(`() (() (')

It is, however, in certain cases necessary or convenient to leave out quotes for some arguments, and there is nothing wrong in doing it. It just makes life a bit harder, if you are not careful. For consistency, this manual follows the rule of thumb that each layer of parentheses introduces another layer of single quoting, except when showing the consequences of quoting rules. This is done even when the quoted string cannot be a macro, such as with integers.

3.5 Macro expansion

When the arguments, if any, to a macro call have been collected, the macro is expanded, and the expansion text is pushed back onto the input (unquoted), and reread. The expansion text from one macro call might therefore result in more macros being called, if the calls are included, completely or partially, in the first macro calls' expansion.

Taking a very simple example, if foo expands to `bar', and bar expands to `Hello world', the input

foo

will expand first to `bar', and when this is reread and expanded, into `Hello world'.

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