1 GNU M4 NEWS - User visible changes.
3 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.14 (2010-02-24) [stable]
4 Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.13.*
6 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.12 where executing with stdout closed
7 could crash m4 on exit on some platforms.
9 ** Fix regressions introduced in 1.4.13 in the `esyscmd' builtin, where
10 closed file descriptors could interfere with child execution, and where
11 a child status of 127 made m4 print a spurious message to stderr.
13 ** Fix a security hole in 'make dist', present since at least M4 1.4, that
14 could affect anybody attempting to redistribute modified sources (see
15 Automake CVE-2009-4029).
17 ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
19 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.13 (2009-04-01) [stable]
20 Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.12.*
22 ** The manual is now distributed under the terms of FDL 1.3.
24 ** The `divert' and `undivert' builtins have been made more efficient
25 when using temporary files for large diversions.
27 ** The `translit' builtin has been made more efficient when the second
30 ** The input engine has been optimized for faster processing.
32 ** The command line option `--debugfile', introduced in 1.4.7, now
33 treats its argument as optional, in order to allow setting the debug
34 output back to stderr when used without an argument; and order is now
35 significant with respect to command line files. You must therefore use
36 `m4 --debugfile=trace file', not `m4 file --debugfile trace'. This
37 change does not affect the deprecated `-o'/`--error-output' option.
39 ** The `syscmd' and `esyscmd' builtins can be configured to use an
40 alternate shell, via the new `configure' option `--with-syscmd-shell'.
42 ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
44 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.12 (2008-10-10) [stable]
45 Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.11.*
47 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.4b where using `traceon' could delete
48 a macro. This was most noticeable with `traceon(`traceon')', but
49 would also happen in cases such as `foo(traceon(`foo'))'.
51 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.7 where `m4 -N9' died with an assertion
54 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.11 where `defn' died with an assertion
55 failure on a traced but undefined macro.
57 ** New `-g'/`--gnu' command-line option overrides `-G'/`--traditional'.
58 For now, the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT has no effect on M4
59 behavior; but a future release of M4 will behave as though --traditional
60 is implied if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set (this future change is necessary,
61 because in the current release, there is no way to disable GNU
62 extensions that conflict with POSIX without the use of a non-POSIX
63 command-line argument). Clients of M4 that want to use GNU extensions,
64 even when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, should start using the -g command-line
65 argument, even though it is currently a no-op if -G did not appear
66 earlier in the command line, so that the client will not break in the
67 face of an upgraded m4 and a POSIXLY_CORRECT execution environment.
69 ** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command-line option now defaults to 0 for
70 unlimited on platforms that can detect and deal with stack overflow. On
71 systems that lack alternate stack support, such as Cygwin, and on
72 systems that do not obey the POSIX semantics for distinguishing stack
73 overflow from other exceptions, such as Linux, you can optionally
74 install the libsigsegv library (version 2.6 or newer recommended) to
75 enhance m4's ability to accurately report stack overflow:
76 http://www.gnu.org/software/libsigsegv/
78 ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
80 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.11 (2008-04-02) [stable]
81 Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.10a
83 ** Security fixes for the -F option, for bugs present since -F was
84 introduced in 1.3: Avoid core dump with 'm4 -F file -t undefined', and
85 avoid arbitrary code execution with certain file names.
87 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b in the `divert' builtin when more
88 than 512 kibibytes are saved in diversions on platforms like NetBSD
89 or darwin where fopen(name,"a+") seeks to the end of the file.
91 ** The output of the `maketemp' and `mkstemp' builtins is now quoted if a
92 file was created. This is a minor security fix, because it was possible
93 (although rather unlikely) that an unquoted string could match an
94 existing macro name, such that use of the `mkstemp' output would trigger
95 inadvertent macro expansion and operate on the wrong file name.
97 ** Enhance the `defn' builtin to support concatenation of multiple text
98 arguments, as required by POSIX. However, at this time, it is not
99 possible to concatenate a builtin macro with anything else; a warning is
100 now issued if this is attempted, although a future version of M4 may
101 lift this restriction to match other implementations.
103 ** Enhance the `format' builtin to parse all C99 floating point numbers,
104 even on platforms where strtod(3) is buggy, although the replacement
105 function does have the known issue of rounding errors when parsing
106 some decimal floating point values. This fixes testsuite failures
107 introduced in 1.4.9b.
109 ** Enhance the `index' builtin to guarantee linear behavior, in spite of
110 the surprisingly large number of systems with a brain-dead quadratic
113 ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
115 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.10 (2007-07-09) [stable]
116 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.9c
118 ** Upgrade from GPL version 2 to GPL version 3 or later.
120 ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
122 ** Avoid undefined behavior introduced in 1.4.9b in the `format' builtin
123 when handling %c. However, this area of code has never been documented,
124 and currently does not match the POSIX behavior of printf(1), so it may
125 have further changes in the next version.
127 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.9b (2007-05-29) [beta]
128 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.9a
130 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9 in the `eval' builtin when performing
133 ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.8 in the `-F' option that made it
134 impossible to freeze more than 512 kibibytes of diverted text.
136 ** The synclines option `-s' no longer generates sync lines in the middle of
137 multiline comments or quoted strings.
139 ** Work around a number of corner-case POSIX compliance bugs in various
140 broken stdio libraries. In particular, the `syscmd' builtin behaves
141 more predictably when stdin is seekable.
143 ** The `format' builtin now understands formats such as %a, %A, and %'hhd,
144 and works around a number of platform printf bugs. Furthermore, the
145 sequence format(%*.*d,-1,-1,1) no longer outputs random data. However,
146 some non-compliant platforms such as mingw still have known bugs in
147 strtod that may cause testsuite failures.
149 ** The testsuite is improved to also run gnulib portability tests for the
150 features that M4 imports from gnulib.
152 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.9 (2007-03-23) [stable]
153 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.8c
155 ** Minor documentation and portability cleanups.
157 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.8b (2007-02-24) [beta]
158 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.8a
160 ** Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 unable to process
161 files larger than 2GiB on some platforms.
163 ** Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 dump core when
164 invoked as 'm4 -- file'.
166 ** The `eval' builtin now follows C precedence rules. Additionally, the
167 short-circuit operators correctly short-circuit division by zero. The
168 previously undocumented alias of '=' meaning '==' in eval now triggers a
169 deprecation warning, so that a future version of M4 can implement a form
170 of variable assignment as an extension.
172 ** The `include' builtin now affects exit status on failure, as required by
173 POSIX. Use `sinclude' if you need a successful exit status.
175 ** The `-E'/`--fatal-warnings' command-line option now has two levels. When
176 specified only once, warnings affect exit status, but execution
177 continues, so that you can see all warnings instead of fixing them one
178 at a time. To achieve 1.4.8 behavior, where the first warning
179 immediately exits, specify -E twice on the command line.
181 ** A new `--warn-macro-sequence' command-line option allows detection of
182 sequences in `define' and `pushdef' definitions that match an optional
183 regular expression. The default regular expression is
184 `\$\({[^}]*}\|[0-9][0-9]+\)', corresponding to the sequences that might
185 not behave correctly when upgrading to the eventual M4 2.0. By default,
186 M4 2.0 will follow the POSIX requirement that a macro definition
187 containing `$11' must expand to the first argument concatenated with 1,
188 rather than the eleventh argument; and will take advantage of the POSIX
189 wording that allows implementations to treat `${11}' as the eleventh
190 argument instead of literal text. Be aware that Autoconf 2.61 will not
191 work with this option enabled with the default regular expression; but
192 Autoconf 2.62 will be compatible with this option.
194 ** Improved portability to platforms such as BSD/OS and AIX.
196 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.8 (2006-11-20) [stable]
197 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.7a
199 ** The `divert' macro and `-H'/`--hashsize' command line option no longer
200 cause a core dump when handed extra large values. Also, `divert' now
201 uses memory proportional to the number of diversions in use, rather than
202 to the maximum diversion number encountered, so that large diversion
203 numbers are less likely to exhaust system memory; and is no longer
204 limited by the maximum number of file descriptors.
206 ** The `--help' and `--version' command line options now consistently
207 override all earlier options. For example, `m4 --debugfile=trace
208 --help' now no longer accidentally creates an empty file `trace'.
210 ** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command line option can now be set to 0
211 to remove the default limit of 1024. However, it is still possible that
212 heavily nested input can cause abrupt program termination due to stack
215 ** Problems encountered when writing to standard error, such as with the
216 `errprint' macro, now always cause a non-zero exit status.
218 ** Warnings and errors issued during macro expansion are now consistently
219 reported at the line where the macro name was detected, rather than
220 where the close parenthesis resides. Text wrapped by `m4wrap' now
221 remembers the location that was in effect when m4wrap was invoked,
222 rather than changing to line 0 and the empty string for a file. The
223 macros `__line__' and `__file__' now work correctly even as the last
224 token in an included file.
226 ** The `builtin' and `indir' macros now transparently handle builtin
227 tokens generated by `defn'.
229 ** When diversions created by the `divert' macro collect enough text that
230 M4 must use temporary files, the environment variable $TMPDIR is now
231 consulted, and a better effort is made to clean up those files in the
232 event of a fatal signal.
234 ** The `mkstemp' builtin is added with the same GNU semantics as `maketemp',
235 based on the recommendation of POSIX to deprecate the POSIX semantics of
236 `maketemp' as inherently insecure. In GNU mode (no -G supplied on the
237 command line), `maketemp' silently retains the secure GNU semantics, but
238 a future release of M4 will change this to emit a warning. In
239 traditional mode (m4 -G), `maketemp' now uses the POSIX-mandated
240 insecure semantics, and issues a warning that you should convert your
241 script to use `mkstemp' instead. Additionally, `mkstemp' and `maketemp'
242 are now well-defined even if the template argument does not end in six
245 ** The manual has been improved, including a new section on a composite
248 ** The `changecom' and `changequote' macros now treat an empty second
249 argument the same as if it were missing, rather than using the empty
250 string and making it impossible to end a comment or quote.
252 ** The `translit' macro now operates in linear instead of quadratic time,
253 and is now eight-bit clean.
255 ** The `-D', `-U', `-s', and `-t' command line options now take effect
256 after any files encountered earlier on the command line, rather than up
257 front, as is done in traditional implementations and required by POSIX.
259 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.7 (2006-09-25) [stable]
260 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.6a
262 ** Fix regression from 1.4.5 in handling a file that ends in a macro
263 expansion without arguments instead of a newline.
265 ** The define and pushdef macros now warn when the first argument is not
266 a string, rather than silently doing nothing.
268 ** Standard input can now be read more than once, as in 'm4 - file -', and
269 is not closed until all wrapped text is handled. This makes a
270 difference when stdin is not a regular file, and also fixes bugs when
271 using the syscmd or esyscmd macros from wrapped text.
273 ** When standard input is a seekable file, the m4exit, syscmd, and esyscmd
274 macros now restore the current position to the next unread byte rather
275 than discarding an arbitrary amount of buffered data.
277 ** SysV command-line compatibility is no longer a goal of GNU M4; the
278 focus will be instead on POSIX compatibility. This release continues to
279 support previous usage, but adds warnings in areas which will allow a
280 future version of GNU M4 to use its own extensions without being tied to
281 the SysV command line interface.
283 ** The no-op compatibility command line options -B, -N, -S, -T, and
284 --diversions may be withdrawn or assigned new meanings in future
285 releases, so they now issue a warning if used.
287 ** A new command line option -i replaces the compatibility -e as the
288 short spelling of --interactive, for consistency with other GNU tools; a
289 warning is issued if the old spelling is used, and it may be assigned
290 new meaning in future releases.
292 ** A new command line option --debugfile replaces the options -o and
293 --error-output as the preferred spelling. The old options were
294 misleading in their names and inconsistent with other GNU tools; they
295 are still silently accepted, but no longer documented in --help, and may
296 be assigned new meanings in future releases.
298 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.6 (2006-08-25) [stable]
299 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.5a
301 ** Fix buffer overruns in regexp and patsubst macros when handed a trailing
302 backslash in the replacement text, or when handling \n substitutions
303 beyond the number of \(\) groups.
305 ** Fix memory leak in regexp, patsubst, and changeword macros.
307 ** The format macro now understands %F, %g, and %G.
309 ** When loading frozen files, m4 now exits with status 63 if version
310 mismatch is detected.
312 ** Fix bugs that occurred when invoked with stdout or stderr closed,
313 and detect write failures to stdout or to the target of the debugfile
314 macro. In particular, the syscmd and esyscmd macros can no longer
315 interfere with the debug stream or diversions.
317 ** The m4exit macro now converts values outside the range 0-255 to 1.
319 ** It is now an error if a command-line input file ends in the middle of a
320 comment, matching the behavior of mid-string and mid-argument
323 ** The dnl macro now warns if end of file is encountered instead of a
326 ** The error message when end of file is encountered now uses the file and
327 line where the dangling construct started, rather than `NONE:0:'.
329 ** The debugmode and __file__ macros, and the -s/--synclines option, now
330 show what directory a file was found in when the -I/--include option or
331 M4PATH variable had an effect.
333 ** The changequote and changecom macros now work with 8-bit characters, and
334 quotes and comments that begin with `(' are properly recognized
337 ** The new macro __program__ is added, which allows the input file to issue
338 an error message that resembles messages from m4. Warning and error
339 messages have been reformatted to comply with GNU Coding Standards.
341 ** The errprint, m4wrap, and shift macros are now recognized only with
344 ** The index, substr, translit, regexp, and patsubst macros now produce
345 output when given only one argument, but still warn about a missing
348 ** The patsubst macro now reliably finds zero-length matches at the end
351 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.5 (2006-07-15) [stable]
352 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.4c
354 ** Fix sysval on BeOS, OS/2, and other systems that store exit status
355 in the low-order byte. Additionally, on Unix platforms, if syscmd was
356 terminated by a signal, sysval now displays the signal number shifted
357 left by eight bits, to match traditional m4 implementations.
359 ** The maketemp macro is no longer subject to platform limitations (such as
360 26 or 32 max files from a given template).
362 ** Frozen files now require that the first directive be V (version), to
363 better diagnose version mismatch. Additionally, if the F directive
364 (builtin function) names an unknown builtin that existed in the m4 that
365 froze the file but not in the current m4 (for example, changeword), the
366 warning is deferred until an attempt is made to actually use the
367 builtin. This allows downgrading from beta m4-1.4o to stable m4-1.4.5
368 without breaking autoconf.
370 ** The format and indir macros are now recognized only with arguments.
372 ** The eval macro no longer crashes on x86 architectures when dividing the
373 minimum integer by -1.
375 ** On systems with ecvt and fcvt, format no longer truncates trailing
376 zeroes on integers printed with %.0f. On systems without these
377 functions, format is no longer subject to a buffer overflow that
378 permitted arbitrary code execution.
380 ** On native Windows builds, the macro __windows__ is provided instead of
381 __unix__. Likewise, on OS/2 builds, the macro __os2__ is provided.
382 This allows input files to determine when syscmd might behave
385 ** Fix bug in 1.4.3 patch to use \n line-endings that did not work for
388 ** When given the empty string or 0, undivert is now documented as a no-op
389 rather than closing stdout, warning about a non-existent file, or trying
390 to read a directory as a file.
392 ** Many documentation improvements. Also, the manual is now distributed
393 under FDL 1.2, rather than a stricter verbatim-only license.
395 ** Raise the -L (--nesting-limit) command line option limit from 250 to
398 ** The decr, incr, divert, m4exit, and substr macros treat an empty number
399 as 0, issue a warning, and expand as normal; rather than issuing an
400 error and expanding to the empty string.
402 ** The eval macro now treats an empty radix argument as 10, handles radix 1,
403 and treats the width argument as number of digits excluding the sign,
404 for compatibility with other m4 implementations.
406 ** The ifdef, divert, m4exit, substr, and translit macros now correctly
407 ignore extra arguments.
409 ** The popdef and undefine macros now correctly accept multiple arguments.
411 ** Although changeword is on its last leg, if enabled, it now reverts to the
412 default (faster) regexp when passed the empty string.
414 ** The regexp and substr macros now warn and ignore a trailing backslash in
415 the replacement, and warn on \n for n larger than the number of
416 sub-expressions in the regexp.
418 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.4b (2006-06-17) [beta]
419 Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.4a
421 ** Fix a recursive push_string crashing bug, which affected changequote of
422 three or more characters on some compilers.
424 ** Use automake to fix build portability issues.
426 ** Fix a recursive m4wrap crashing bug.
428 ** Fix a 1 in 2**32 hash crashing bug.
430 ** Tracing a macro by name is now persistent, even if the macro is
431 subsequently undefined or redefined. The traceon and traceoff macros no
432 longer warn about undefined symbols. This solves a crash when using
433 indir on an undefined macro traced with the -t option, as well as an
434 incorrect result of ifdef. Furthermore, tracing is no longer
435 transferred with builtins, solving the bug of "m4 -tm4_eval" failing to
436 give trace output on the input
437 "define(`m4_eval',defn(`eval'))m4_eval(1)".
439 ** Fix a crash when a macro is undefined while collecting its arguments, by
440 always using the definition that was in effect before argument
441 collection. This behavior matches the C pre-processor, and means that
442 the sequence "define(`f',`1')f(define(`f',`2'))f" is now documented to
443 result in "12", rather than the previously undocumented "22".
445 ** Update the regex engine to fix several bugs.
447 ** Fix a potential crash on machines where char is signed.
449 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.4 (Oct 2005) [stable]
450 Released by Gary V. Vaughan
452 ** ./configure --infodir=/usr/share/info now works correctly.
454 ** When any file named on the command line is missing exit with status 1.
456 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.3 (Mar 2005) [stable]
457 Released by Gary V. Vaughan
459 ** DESTDIR installs now work correctly.
461 ** Don't segfault with uncompilable regexps to changeword().
463 ** Always use \n line-endings for frozen files (fixes a Windows bug).
465 ** Portability fix for systems lacking mkstemp(3).
467 ** Approximately 20% speed up in the common case of usage with autoconf.
469 ** Supported on QNX 6.3.
471 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.2 (Aug 2004) [stable]
472 Released by Paul Eggert
474 ** No user visible changes; portability bug fixes only.
476 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.1 (Jun 2004) [stable]
477 Released by Paul Eggert
479 ** maketemp now creates an empty file with the given name, instead of merely
480 returning the name of a nonexistent file. This closes a security hole.
482 * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4 (Oct 1994) [stable]
483 Released by Franc,ois Pinard
485 ** (No user visible changes)
488 Version 1.3 - September 1994, by Franc,ois Pinard
490 * Diversions are created as needed. Option `-N' is still accepted, but
491 otherwise ignored. Users should use only negative diversion numbers,
492 instead of high positive numbers, for diverting to nowhere.
494 * Diversions should also work faster. No temporary files will be needed
495 at all if all diversions taken altogether do not use more than 512K.
497 * Frozen state files may be produced with the `--freeze-state' (-F)
498 option and later brought back through the `--reload-state' (-R) option.
500 Version 1.2 - July 1994, by Franc,ois Pinard
502 * In patsubst(STRING, REGEXP, REPLACEMENT), \& in REPLACEMENT has been
503 changed to represent this part of STRING matched by the whole REGEXP,
504 instead of the whole STRING as before. \0 does the same, but emits a
505 diagnostic saying it will disappear in some subsequent release.
507 * eval(EXPR) emits a diagnostic if EXPR has suffixed crumb. The same for
508 other numeric conversions in incr(), decr(), divert(), etc.
510 * `--fatal-warnings' (-E) stops execution at first warning.
512 * `--nesting-limit=LEVEL' (-L LEVEL) sets a limit to macro nesting.
513 It is initially fixed at 250.
515 * `--word-regexp=REGEXP' (-W REGEXP) modifies macro name syntax, like
516 does the new `changeword(REGEXP)' macro. This feature is experimental,
517 tell me your opinions about it. You do need --enable-changeword at
518 configure time to get these things. Do *not* depend on them yet.
520 * Trace output format is scannable by GNU Emacs' next-error function.
522 * Stack overflow is detected and diagnosed on some capable systems.
524 * Various bugs have been corrected, m4 should be more portable. See the
525 ChangeLog for details.
527 Version 1.1 - November 1993, by Franc,ois Pinard
529 Changes which might affect existing GNU m4 scripts:
531 * Option `-V' has been removed, use `--version' instead. `--version'
532 writes on standard output instead of standard error, and inhibits any
535 * `--no-gnu-extensions' has been renamed `--traditional'.
537 * In `eval', `^' used to indicate exponentiation, use `**' instead.
539 * The automatic undiversion which takes place at end of all input is
540 forced into the main output stream.
542 Changes which are unlikely to affect existing scripts:
544 * `--help' prints an usage summary on standard output. Script execution
547 * `--prefix-builtins' (-P) prefixes all builtin macros by `m4_'.
549 * Most builtin macros for which arguments are mandatory, called without
550 any arguments, are no more recognized as builtin macros: they are
551 consequently copied verbatim to the output stream.
553 * `define' and `pushdef' are usable with only one argument, they give
554 this argument an empty definition.
556 * `eval' new operators for binary representation handling: `^' for
557 exclusive-or, `~' for the bitwise negation, `<<' and `>>' for shifts.
559 * `eval' recognizes the notation 0bDIGITS for binary numbers and the
560 notation 0rRADIX:DIGITS for numbers in any radix from 1 to 36.
562 Version 1.0.3 - December 1992, by Franc,ois Pinard
564 Changes for the user:
566 * `dnl' outputs a diagnostic if immediately followed by `('. Usually,
567 `dnl' is followed by newline or whitespace.
569 * `ifelse' accepts without complaining the common idiom of having only
570 one argument. This is useful for introducing long comments.
572 * `eval' always expresses values as signed, whatever the radix.
574 * M4OPTS environment variable is no longer obeyed.
576 * `--no-warnings' option is renamed `--silent'.
578 * Debug lines use a new format more compatible with GNU standards.
580 * Various bugs have been corrected. See the ChangeLog for details.
582 Changes for the installer:
584 * GNU m4 now uses an Autoconf-generated configure script, and should be
585 more easily portable in many ways. (Cray is not supported yet).
587 * `make check' has been made more portable, expect no errors.
589 Changes for the programmer:
591 * Sources have been fully reindented to comply with GNU standards, and
592 cleaned up in many ways.
594 * Sources have been protoized. Non-ANSI compilers are automatically
595 detected, then sources are unprotoized on the fly before compilation.
597 * GNU m4 uses newer versions of obstack, regex, getopt, etc.
599 Version 1.0 - October 1991, by Rene' Seindal
601 * Uses GNU configure, taken from the gdb distribution.
603 * Uses GNU getopt(), with long option names.
605 * The -Q/+quiet option is added, which suppresses warnings about missing
606 or superflous arguments to built-in macros.
608 * Added default options via the M4OPTS environment variable.
610 * Several minor bugs have been fixed.
612 Version 0.99 - July 1991, by Rene' Seindal
614 * The builtins `incr' and `decr' are now implemented without use of
617 * The builtin `indir' is added, to allow for indirect macro calls
618 (allows use of "illegal" macro names).
620 * The debugging and tracing facilities has been enhanced considerably.
621 See the manual for details.
623 * The -tMACRO option is added, marks MACRO for tracing as soon as it
626 * Builtins are traced after renaming iff they were before.
628 * Named files can now be undiverted.
630 * The -Nnum option can be used to increase the number of divertions
633 * Calling changecom without arguments now disables all comment handling.
635 * A bug in `dnl' is fixed.
637 * A bug in the multi-character quoting code is fixed.
639 * Several typos in the manual has been corrected. More probably persist.
641 Version 0.75 - November 1990, by Rene' Seindal
643 * Implemented search path for include files (-I option and M4PATH
644 environment variable).
646 * Implemented builtin `format' for printf-like formatting.
648 * Implemented builtin `regexp' for searching for regular expressions.
650 * Implemented builtin `patsubst' for substitution with regular
653 * Implemented builtin `esyscmd', which expands to a shell commands output.
655 * Implemented `__file__' and `__line__' for use in error messages.
657 * Implemented character ranges in `translit'.
659 * Implemented control over debugging output.
661 * Implemented multi-character quotes.
663 * Implemented multi-character comment delimiters.
665 * Changed predefined macro `gnu' to `__gnu__'.
667 * Changed predefined macro `unix' to `__unix__', when the -G option is
668 not used. With -G, `unix' is still defined.
670 * Added program name to error messages.
672 * Fixed two missing null bytes bugs.
674 Version 0.50 - January 1990, by Rene' Seindal
676 * Initial beta release.
678 ========================================================================
685 Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
686 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
688 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
689 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
690 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
691 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
692 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
693 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.