8.3.2 Evaluation Macros

The following macros give some control over the order of the evaluation by adding or removing levels of quotes. They are meant for hard-core M4 programmers.

Macro: m4_dquote (arg1, ...)

Return the arguments as a quoted list of quoted arguments.

Macro: m4_quote (arg1, ...)

Return the arguments as a single entity, i.e., wrap them into a pair of quotes.

The following example aims at emphasizing the difference between (i), not using these macros, (ii), using m4_quote, and (iii), using m4_dquote.

$ cat example.m4 # Overquote, so that quotes are visible. m4_define([show], [$[]1 = [$1], $[]@ = [$@]]) m4_divert(0)dnl show(a, b) show(m4_quote(a, b)) show(m4_dquote(a, b)) $ autom4te -l m4sugar example.m4 $1 = a, $@ = [a],[b] $1 = a,b, $@ = [a,b] $1 = [a],[b], $@ = [[a],[b]]