(m4.info) History

 
 Historical references
 =====================
 
    The historical notes included here are fairly incomplete, and not
 authoritative at all.  Please knowledgeable users help us to more
 properly write this section.
 
    `GPM' has been an important ancestor of `m4'.  See C. Stratchey: "A
 General Purpose Macro generator", Computer Journal 8,3 (1965), pp. 225
 ff.  `GPM' is also succintly described into David Gries classic
 "Compiler Construction for Digital Computers".
 
    While `GPM' was *pure*, `m4' was meant to deal more with the true
 intricacies of real life: macros could be recognized with being
 pre-announced, skipping whitespace or end-of-lines was made easier,
 more constructs were builtin instead of derived, etc.
 
    Originally, `m4' was the engine for Rational FORTRAN preprocessor,
 that is, the `ratfor' equivalent of `cpp'.

Info Catalog

(m4.info) Intro

(m4.info) Preliminaries

(m4.info) Invoking m4

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