man m4 dit :
M4(1) User Commands M4(1)



NAME
m4 - macro processor

SYNOPSIS
m4 [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
Process macros in FILEs. If no FILE or if FILE is ‘-’, standard input
is read.

Mandatory or optional arguments to long options are mandatory or
optional for short options too.

Operation modes:
--help display this help and exit

--version
output version information and exit

-E, --fatal-warnings
once: warnings become errors, twice: stop execution at first
error

-i, --interactive
unbuffer output, ignore interrupts

-P, --prefix-builtins
force a ‘m4_’ prefix to all builtins

-Q, --quiet, --silent
suppress some warnings for builtins

--warn-macro-sequence[]
warn if macro definition matches REGEXP, default
$({[^}]*}|[0-9][0-9]+)

-W, --word-regexp=REGEXP
use REGEXP for macro name syntax

Preprocessor features:
-D, --define=NAME[]
define NAME as having VALUE, or empty

-I, --include=DIRECTORY
append DIRECTORY to include path

-s, --synclines
generate ‘#line NUM "FILE"’ lines

-U, --undefine=NAME
undefine NAME

Limits control:
-G, --traditional
suppress all GNU extensions

-H, --hashsize=PRIME
set symbol lookup hash table size [509]

-L, --nesting-limit=NUMBER
change artificial nesting limit [1024]

Frozen state files:
-F, --freeze-state=FILE
produce a frozen state on FILE at end

-R, --reload-state=FILE
reload a frozen state from FILE at start

Debugging:
-d, --debug[]
set debug level (no FLAGS implies ‘aeq’)

--debugfile=FILE
redirect debug and trace output

-l, --arglength=NUM
restrict macro tracing size

-t, --trace=NAME
trace NAME when it is defined

FLAGS is any of:
a show actual arguments

c show before collect, after collect and after call

e show expansion

f say current input file name

i show changes in input files

l say current input line number

p show results of path searches

q quote values as necessary, with a or e flag

t trace for all macro calls, not only traceon’ed

x add a unique macro call id, useful with c flag

V shorthand for all of the above flags

If defined, the environment variable ‘M4PATH’ is a colon-separated list
of directories included after any specified by ‘-I’.

Exit status is 0 for success, 1 for failure, 63 for frozen file version
mismatch, or whatever value was passed to the m4exit macro.

AUTHOR
Written by Rene’ Seindal.

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-m4@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU
GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO
The full documentation for m4 is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If
the info and m4 programs are properly installed at your site, the com&#8208;
mand

info m4

should give you access to the complete manual.



GNU M4 1.4.11 April 2008 M4(1)