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  1. GNU M4 NEWS - User visible changes.
  2. * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.18 (2016-12-31) [stable]
  3. ** Diagnose --word-regexp as unsupported if it was not configured.
  4. ** Preliminary support for OS/2.
  5. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  6. * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.17 (2013-09-22) [stable]
  7. ** Fix compilation with newer glibc headers.
  8. ** Fix a failure with diverting large amounts of text on mingw (does
  9. not affect platforms that can rename an open file).
  10. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  11. * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.16 (2011-03-01) [stable]
  12. ** Fix regressions in the `index' builtin. On glibc platforms, this
  13. avoids false positives from a strstr bug in glibc 2.9 through 2.12;
  14. on many other platforms, it fixes two separate regressions, a false
  15. positive introduced in 1.4.11 and a false negative in 1.4.15.
  16. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  17. * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.15 (2010-08-31) [stable]
  18. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b where the `format' builtin could
  19. crash on an invalid format string.
  20. ** Fix compilation against newer glibc, and on AIX 7.1BETA.
  21. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  22. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.14 (2010-02-24) [stable]
  23. Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.13.*
  24. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.12 where executing with stdout closed
  25. could crash m4 on exit on some platforms.
  26. ** Fix regressions introduced in 1.4.13 in the `esyscmd' builtin, where
  27. closed file descriptors could interfere with child execution, and where
  28. a child status of 127 made m4 print a spurious message to stderr.
  29. ** Fix a security hole in 'make dist', present since at least M4 1.4, that
  30. could affect anybody attempting to redistribute modified sources (see
  31. Automake CVE-2009-4029).
  32. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  33. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.13 (2009-04-01) [stable]
  34. Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.12.*
  35. ** The manual is now distributed under the terms of FDL 1.3.
  36. ** The `divert' and `undivert' builtins have been made more efficient
  37. when using temporary files for large diversions.
  38. ** The `translit' builtin has been made more efficient when the second
  39. argument is short.
  40. ** The input engine has been optimized for faster processing.
  41. ** The command line option `--debugfile', introduced in 1.4.7, now
  42. treats its argument as optional, in order to allow setting the debug
  43. output back to stderr when used without an argument; and order is now
  44. significant with respect to command line files. You must therefore use
  45. `m4 --debugfile=trace file', not `m4 file --debugfile trace'. This
  46. change does not affect the deprecated `-o'/`--error-output' option.
  47. ** The `syscmd' and `esyscmd' builtins can be configured to use an
  48. alternate shell, via the new `configure' option `--with-syscmd-shell'.
  49. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  50. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.12 (2008-10-10) [stable]
  51. Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.11.*
  52. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.4b where using `traceon' could delete
  53. a macro. This was most noticeable with `traceon(`traceon')', but
  54. would also happen in cases such as `foo(traceon(`foo'))'.
  55. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.7 where `m4 -N9' died with an assertion
  56. failure.
  57. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.11 where `defn' died with an assertion
  58. failure on a traced but undefined macro.
  59. ** New `-g'/`--gnu' command-line option overrides `-G'/`--traditional'.
  60. For now, the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT has no effect on M4
  61. behavior; but a future release of M4 will behave as though --traditional
  62. is implied if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set (this future change is necessary,
  63. because in the current release, there is no way to disable GNU
  64. extensions that conflict with POSIX without the use of a non-POSIX
  65. command-line argument). Clients of M4 that want to use GNU extensions,
  66. even when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, should start using the -g command-line
  67. argument, even though it is currently a no-op if -G did not appear
  68. earlier in the command line, so that the client will not break in the
  69. face of an upgraded m4 and a POSIXLY_CORRECT execution environment.
  70. ** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command-line option now defaults to 0 for
  71. unlimited on platforms that can detect and deal with stack overflow. On
  72. systems that lack alternate stack support, such as Cygwin, and on
  73. systems that do not obey the POSIX semantics for distinguishing stack
  74. overflow from other exceptions, such as Linux, you can optionally
  75. install the libsigsegv library (version 2.6 or newer recommended) to
  76. enhance m4's ability to accurately report stack overflow:
  77. http://www.gnu.org/software/libsigsegv/
  78. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  79. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.11 (2008-04-02) [stable]
  80. Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.10a
  81. ** Security fixes for the -F option, for bugs present since -F was
  82. introduced in 1.3: Avoid core dump with 'm4 -F file -t undefined', and
  83. avoid arbitrary code execution with certain file names.
  84. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b in the `divert' builtin when more
  85. than 512 kibibytes are saved in diversions on platforms like NetBSD
  86. or darwin where fopen(name,"a+") seeks to the end of the file.
  87. ** The output of the `maketemp' and `mkstemp' builtins is now quoted if a
  88. file was created. This is a minor security fix, because it was possible
  89. (although rather unlikely) that an unquoted string could match an
  90. existing macro name, such that use of the `mkstemp' output would trigger
  91. inadvertent macro expansion and operate on the wrong file name.
  92. ** Enhance the `defn' builtin to support concatenation of multiple text
  93. arguments, as required by POSIX. However, at this time, it is not
  94. possible to concatenate a builtin macro with anything else; a warning is
  95. now issued if this is attempted, although a future version of M4 may
  96. lift this restriction to match other implementations.
  97. ** Enhance the `format' builtin to parse all C99 floating point numbers,
  98. even on platforms where strtod(3) is buggy, although the replacement
  99. function does have the known issue of rounding errors when parsing
  100. some decimal floating point values. This fixes testsuite failures
  101. introduced in 1.4.9b.
  102. ** Enhance the `index' builtin to guarantee linear behavior, in spite of
  103. the surprisingly large number of systems with a brain-dead quadratic
  104. strstr(3).
  105. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  106. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.10 (2007-07-09) [stable]
  107. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.9c
  108. ** Upgrade from GPL version 2 to GPL version 3 or later.
  109. ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib.
  110. ** Avoid undefined behavior introduced in 1.4.9b in the `format' builtin
  111. when handling %c. However, this area of code has never been documented,
  112. and currently does not match the POSIX behavior of printf(1), so it may
  113. have further changes in the next version.
  114. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.9b (2007-05-29) [beta]
  115. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.9a
  116. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9 in the `eval' builtin when performing
  117. division.
  118. ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.8 in the `-F' option that made it
  119. impossible to freeze more than 512 kibibytes of diverted text.
  120. ** The synclines option `-s' no longer generates sync lines in the middle of
  121. multiline comments or quoted strings.
  122. ** Work around a number of corner-case POSIX compliance bugs in various
  123. broken stdio libraries. In particular, the `syscmd' builtin behaves
  124. more predictably when stdin is seekable.
  125. ** The `format' builtin now understands formats such as %a, %A, and %'hhd,
  126. and works around a number of platform printf bugs. Furthermore, the
  127. sequence format(%*.*d,-1,-1,1) no longer outputs random data. However,
  128. some non-compliant platforms such as mingw still have known bugs in
  129. strtod that may cause testsuite failures.
  130. ** The testsuite is improved to also run gnulib portability tests for the
  131. features that M4 imports from gnulib.
  132. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.9 (2007-03-23) [stable]
  133. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.8c
  134. ** Minor documentation and portability cleanups.
  135. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.8b (2007-02-24) [beta]
  136. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.8a
  137. ** Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 unable to process
  138. files larger than 2GiB on some platforms.
  139. ** Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 dump core when
  140. invoked as 'm4 -- file'.
  141. ** The `eval' builtin now follows C precedence rules. Additionally, the
  142. short-circuit operators correctly short-circuit division by zero. The
  143. previously undocumented alias of '=' meaning '==' in eval now triggers a
  144. deprecation warning, so that a future version of M4 can implement a form
  145. of variable assignment as an extension.
  146. ** The `include' builtin now affects exit status on failure, as required by
  147. POSIX. Use `sinclude' if you need a successful exit status.
  148. ** The `-E'/`--fatal-warnings' command-line option now has two levels. When
  149. specified only once, warnings affect exit status, but execution
  150. continues, so that you can see all warnings instead of fixing them one
  151. at a time. To achieve 1.4.8 behavior, where the first warning
  152. immediately exits, specify -E twice on the command line.
  153. ** A new `--warn-macro-sequence' command-line option allows detection of
  154. sequences in `define' and `pushdef' definitions that match an optional
  155. regular expression. The default regular expression is
  156. `\$\({[^}]*}\|[0-9][0-9]+\)', corresponding to the sequences that might
  157. not behave correctly when upgrading to the eventual M4 2.0. By default,
  158. M4 2.0 will follow the POSIX requirement that a macro definition
  159. containing `$11' must expand to the first argument concatenated with 1,
  160. rather than the eleventh argument; and will take advantage of the POSIX
  161. wording that allows implementations to treat `${11}' as the eleventh
  162. argument instead of literal text. Be aware that Autoconf 2.61 will not
  163. work with this option enabled with the default regular expression; but
  164. Autoconf 2.62 will be compatible with this option.
  165. ** Improved portability to platforms such as BSD/OS and AIX.
  166. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.8 (2006-11-20) [stable]
  167. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.7a
  168. ** The `divert' macro and `-H'/`--hashsize' command line option no longer
  169. cause a core dump when handed extra large values. Also, `divert' now
  170. uses memory proportional to the number of diversions in use, rather than
  171. to the maximum diversion number encountered, so that large diversion
  172. numbers are less likely to exhaust system memory; and is no longer
  173. limited by the maximum number of file descriptors.
  174. ** The `--help' and `--version' command line options now consistently
  175. override all earlier options. For example, `m4 --debugfile=trace
  176. --help' now no longer accidentally creates an empty file `trace'.
  177. ** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command line option can now be set to 0
  178. to remove the default limit of 1024. However, it is still possible that
  179. heavily nested input can cause abrupt program termination due to stack
  180. overflow.
  181. ** Problems encountered when writing to standard error, such as with the
  182. `errprint' macro, now always cause a non-zero exit status.
  183. ** Warnings and errors issued during macro expansion are now consistently
  184. reported at the line where the macro name was detected, rather than
  185. where the close parenthesis resides. Text wrapped by `m4wrap' now
  186. remembers the location that was in effect when m4wrap was invoked,
  187. rather than changing to line 0 and the empty string for a file. The
  188. macros `__line__' and `__file__' now work correctly even as the last
  189. token in an included file.
  190. ** The `builtin' and `indir' macros now transparently handle builtin
  191. tokens generated by `defn'.
  192. ** When diversions created by the `divert' macro collect enough text that
  193. M4 must use temporary files, the environment variable $TMPDIR is now
  194. consulted, and a better effort is made to clean up those files in the
  195. event of a fatal signal.
  196. ** The `mkstemp' builtin is added with the same GNU semantics as `maketemp',
  197. based on the recommendation of POSIX to deprecate the POSIX semantics of
  198. `maketemp' as inherently insecure. In GNU mode (no -G supplied on the
  199. command line), `maketemp' silently retains the secure GNU semantics, but
  200. a future release of M4 will change this to emit a warning. In
  201. traditional mode (m4 -G), `maketemp' now uses the POSIX-mandated
  202. insecure semantics, and issues a warning that you should convert your
  203. script to use `mkstemp' instead. Additionally, `mkstemp' and `maketemp'
  204. are now well-defined even if the template argument does not end in six
  205. `X' characters.
  206. ** The manual has been improved, including a new section on a composite
  207. macro `foreach'.
  208. ** The `changecom' and `changequote' macros now treat an empty second
  209. argument the same as if it were missing, rather than using the empty
  210. string and making it impossible to end a comment or quote.
  211. ** The `translit' macro now operates in linear instead of quadratic time,
  212. and is now eight-bit clean.
  213. ** The `-D', `-U', `-s', and `-t' command line options now take effect
  214. after any files encountered earlier on the command line, rather than up
  215. front, as is done in traditional implementations and required by POSIX.
  216. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.7 (2006-09-25) [stable]
  217. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.6a
  218. ** Fix regression from 1.4.5 in handling a file that ends in a macro
  219. expansion without arguments instead of a newline.
  220. ** The define and pushdef macros now warn when the first argument is not
  221. a string, rather than silently doing nothing.
  222. ** Standard input can now be read more than once, as in 'm4 - file -', and
  223. is not closed until all wrapped text is handled. This makes a
  224. difference when stdin is not a regular file, and also fixes bugs when
  225. using the syscmd or esyscmd macros from wrapped text.
  226. ** When standard input is a seekable file, the m4exit, syscmd, and esyscmd
  227. macros now restore the current position to the next unread byte rather
  228. than discarding an arbitrary amount of buffered data.
  229. ** SysV command-line compatibility is no longer a goal of GNU M4; the
  230. focus will be instead on POSIX compatibility. This release continues to
  231. support previous usage, but adds warnings in areas which will allow a
  232. future version of GNU M4 to use its own extensions without being tied to
  233. the SysV command line interface.
  234. ** The no-op compatibility command line options -B, -N, -S, -T, and
  235. --diversions may be withdrawn or assigned new meanings in future
  236. releases, so they now issue a warning if used.
  237. ** A new command line option -i replaces the compatibility -e as the
  238. short spelling of --interactive, for consistency with other GNU tools; a
  239. warning is issued if the old spelling is used, and it may be assigned
  240. new meaning in future releases.
  241. ** A new command line option --debugfile replaces the options -o and
  242. --error-output as the preferred spelling. The old options were
  243. misleading in their names and inconsistent with other GNU tools; they
  244. are still silently accepted, but no longer documented in --help, and may
  245. be assigned new meanings in future releases.
  246. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.6 (2006-08-25) [stable]
  247. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.5a
  248. ** Fix buffer overruns in regexp and patsubst macros when handed a trailing
  249. backslash in the replacement text, or when handling \n substitutions
  250. beyond the number of \(\) groups.
  251. ** Fix memory leak in regexp, patsubst, and changeword macros.
  252. ** The format macro now understands %F, %g, and %G.
  253. ** When loading frozen files, m4 now exits with status 63 if version
  254. mismatch is detected.
  255. ** Fix bugs that occurred when invoked with stdout or stderr closed,
  256. and detect write failures to stdout or to the target of the debugfile
  257. macro. In particular, the syscmd and esyscmd macros can no longer
  258. interfere with the debug stream or diversions.
  259. ** The m4exit macro now converts values outside the range 0-255 to 1.
  260. ** It is now an error if a command-line input file ends in the middle of a
  261. comment, matching the behavior of mid-string and mid-argument
  262. collection.
  263. ** The dnl macro now warns if end of file is encountered instead of a
  264. newline.
  265. ** The error message when end of file is encountered now uses the file and
  266. line where the dangling construct started, rather than `NONE:0:'.
  267. ** The debugmode and __file__ macros, and the -s/--synclines option, now
  268. show what directory a file was found in when the -I/--include option or
  269. M4PATH variable had an effect.
  270. ** The changequote and changecom macros now work with 8-bit characters, and
  271. quotes and comments that begin with `(' are properly recognized
  272. following a word.
  273. ** The new macro __program__ is added, which allows the input file to issue
  274. an error message that resembles messages from m4. Warning and error
  275. messages have been reformatted to comply with GNU Coding Standards.
  276. ** The errprint, m4wrap, and shift macros are now recognized only with
  277. arguments.
  278. ** The index, substr, translit, regexp, and patsubst macros now produce
  279. output when given only one argument, but still warn about a missing
  280. second argument.
  281. ** The patsubst macro now reliably finds zero-length matches at the end
  282. of a string.
  283. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.5 (2006-07-15) [stable]
  284. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.4c
  285. ** Fix sysval on BeOS, OS/2, and other systems that store exit status
  286. in the low-order byte. Additionally, on Unix platforms, if syscmd was
  287. terminated by a signal, sysval now displays the signal number shifted
  288. left by eight bits, to match traditional m4 implementations.
  289. ** The maketemp macro is no longer subject to platform limitations (such as
  290. 26 or 32 max files from a given template).
  291. ** Frozen files now require that the first directive be V (version), to
  292. better diagnose version mismatch. Additionally, if the F directive
  293. (builtin function) names an unknown builtin that existed in the m4 that
  294. froze the file but not in the current m4 (for example, changeword), the
  295. warning is deferred until an attempt is made to actually use the
  296. builtin. This allows downgrading from beta m4-1.4o to stable m4-1.4.5
  297. without breaking autoconf.
  298. ** The format and indir macros are now recognized only with arguments.
  299. ** The eval macro no longer crashes on x86 architectures when dividing the
  300. minimum integer by -1.
  301. ** On systems with ecvt and fcvt, format no longer truncates trailing
  302. zeroes on integers printed with %.0f. On systems without these
  303. functions, format is no longer subject to a buffer overflow that
  304. permitted arbitrary code execution.
  305. ** On native Windows builds, the macro __windows__ is provided instead of
  306. __unix__. Likewise, on OS/2 builds, the macro __os2__ is provided.
  307. This allows input files to determine when syscmd might behave
  308. differently.
  309. ** Fix bug in 1.4.3 patch to use \n line-endings that did not work for
  310. cygwin.
  311. ** When given the empty string or 0, undivert is now documented as a no-op
  312. rather than closing stdout, warning about a non-existent file, or trying
  313. to read a directory as a file.
  314. ** Many documentation improvements. Also, the manual is now distributed
  315. under FDL 1.2, rather than a stricter verbatim-only license.
  316. ** Raise the -L (--nesting-limit) command line option limit from 250 to
  317. 1024.
  318. ** The decr, incr, divert, m4exit, and substr macros treat an empty number
  319. as 0, issue a warning, and expand as normal; rather than issuing an
  320. error and expanding to the empty string.
  321. ** The eval macro now treats an empty radix argument as 10, handles radix 1,
  322. and treats the width argument as number of digits excluding the sign,
  323. for compatibility with other m4 implementations.
  324. ** The ifdef, divert, m4exit, substr, and translit macros now correctly
  325. ignore extra arguments.
  326. ** The popdef and undefine macros now correctly accept multiple arguments.
  327. ** Although changeword is on its last leg, if enabled, it now reverts to the
  328. default (faster) regexp when passed the empty string.
  329. ** The regexp and substr macros now warn and ignore a trailing backslash in
  330. the replacement, and warn on \n for n larger than the number of
  331. sub-expressions in the regexp.
  332. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.4b (2006-06-17) [beta]
  333. Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.4a
  334. ** Fix a recursive push_string crashing bug, which affected changequote of
  335. three or more characters on some compilers.
  336. ** Use automake to fix build portability issues.
  337. ** Fix a recursive m4wrap crashing bug.
  338. ** Fix a 1 in 2**32 hash crashing bug.
  339. ** Tracing a macro by name is now persistent, even if the macro is
  340. subsequently undefined or redefined. The traceon and traceoff macros no
  341. longer warn about undefined symbols. This solves a crash when using
  342. indir on an undefined macro traced with the -t option, as well as an
  343. incorrect result of ifdef. Furthermore, tracing is no longer
  344. transferred with builtins, solving the bug of "m4 -tm4_eval" failing to
  345. give trace output on the input
  346. "define(`m4_eval',defn(`eval'))m4_eval(1)".
  347. ** Fix a crash when a macro is undefined while collecting its arguments, by
  348. always using the definition that was in effect before argument
  349. collection. This behavior matches the C pre-processor, and means that
  350. the sequence "define(`f',`1')f(define(`f',`2'))f" is now documented to
  351. result in "12", rather than the previously undocumented "22".
  352. ** Update the regex engine to fix several bugs.
  353. ** Fix a potential crash on machines where char is signed.
  354. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.4 (Oct 2005) [stable]
  355. Released by Gary V. Vaughan
  356. ** ./configure --infodir=/usr/share/info now works correctly.
  357. ** When any file named on the command line is missing exit with status 1.
  358. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.3 (Mar 2005) [stable]
  359. Released by Gary V. Vaughan
  360. ** DESTDIR installs now work correctly.
  361. ** Don't segfault with uncompilable regexps to changeword().
  362. ** Always use \n line-endings for frozen files (fixes a Windows bug).
  363. ** Portability fix for systems lacking mkstemp(3).
  364. ** Approximately 20% speed up in the common case of usage with autoconf.
  365. ** Supported on QNX 6.3.
  366. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.2 (Aug 2004) [stable]
  367. Released by Paul Eggert
  368. ** No user visible changes; portability bug fixes only.
  369. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.1 (Jun 2004) [stable]
  370. Released by Paul Eggert
  371. ** maketemp now creates an empty file with the given name, instead of merely
  372. returning the name of a nonexistent file. This closes a security hole.
  373. * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4 (Oct 1994) [stable]
  374. Released by Franc,ois Pinard
  375. ** (No user visible changes)
  376. Version 1.3 - September 1994, by Franc,ois Pinard
  377. * Diversions are created as needed. Option `-N' is still accepted, but
  378. otherwise ignored. Users should use only negative diversion numbers,
  379. instead of high positive numbers, for diverting to nowhere.
  380. * Diversions should also work faster. No temporary files will be needed
  381. at all if all diversions taken altogether do not use more than 512K.
  382. * Frozen state files may be produced with the `--freeze-state' (-F)
  383. option and later brought back through the `--reload-state' (-R) option.
  384. Version 1.2 - July 1994, by Franc,ois Pinard
  385. * In patsubst(STRING, REGEXP, REPLACEMENT), \& in REPLACEMENT has been
  386. changed to represent this part of STRING matched by the whole REGEXP,
  387. instead of the whole STRING as before. \0 does the same, but emits a
  388. diagnostic saying it will disappear in some subsequent release.
  389. * eval(EXPR) emits a diagnostic if EXPR has suffixed crumb. The same for
  390. other numeric conversions in incr(), decr(), divert(), etc.
  391. * `--fatal-warnings' (-E) stops execution at first warning.
  392. * `--nesting-limit=LEVEL' (-L LEVEL) sets a limit to macro nesting.
  393. It is initially fixed at 250.
  394. * `--word-regexp=REGEXP' (-W REGEXP) modifies macro name syntax, like
  395. does the new `changeword(REGEXP)' macro. This feature is experimental,
  396. tell me your opinions about it. You do need --enable-changeword at
  397. configure time to get these things. Do *not* depend on them yet.
  398. * Trace output format is scannable by GNU Emacs' next-error function.
  399. * Stack overflow is detected and diagnosed on some capable systems.
  400. * Various bugs have been corrected, m4 should be more portable. See the
  401. ChangeLog for details.
  402. Version 1.1 - November 1993, by Franc,ois Pinard
  403. Changes which might affect existing GNU m4 scripts:
  404. * Option `-V' has been removed, use `--version' instead. `--version'
  405. writes on standard output instead of standard error, and inhibits any
  406. script execution.
  407. * `--no-gnu-extensions' has been renamed `--traditional'.
  408. * In `eval', `^' used to indicate exponentiation, use `**' instead.
  409. * The automatic undiversion which takes place at end of all input is
  410. forced into the main output stream.
  411. Changes which are unlikely to affect existing scripts:
  412. * `--help' prints an usage summary on standard output. Script execution
  413. is then inhibited.
  414. * `--prefix-builtins' (-P) prefixes all builtin macros by `m4_'.
  415. * Most builtin macros for which arguments are mandatory, called without
  416. any arguments, are no more recognized as builtin macros: they are
  417. consequently copied verbatim to the output stream.
  418. * `define' and `pushdef' are usable with only one argument, they give
  419. this argument an empty definition.
  420. * `eval' new operators for binary representation handling: `^' for
  421. exclusive-or, `~' for the bitwise negation, `<<' and `>>' for shifts.
  422. * `eval' recognizes the notation 0bDIGITS for binary numbers and the
  423. notation 0rRADIX:DIGITS for numbers in any radix from 1 to 36.
  424. Version 1.0.3 - December 1992, by Franc,ois Pinard
  425. Changes for the user:
  426. * `dnl' outputs a diagnostic if immediately followed by `('. Usually,
  427. `dnl' is followed by newline or whitespace.
  428. * `ifelse' accepts without complaining the common idiom of having only
  429. one argument. This is useful for introducing long comments.
  430. * `eval' always expresses values as signed, whatever the radix.
  431. * M4OPTS environment variable is no longer obeyed.
  432. * `--no-warnings' option is renamed `--silent'.
  433. * Debug lines use a new format more compatible with GNU standards.
  434. * Various bugs have been corrected. See the ChangeLog for details.
  435. Changes for the installer:
  436. * GNU m4 now uses an Autoconf-generated configure script, and should be
  437. more easily portable in many ways. (Cray is not supported yet).
  438. * `make check' has been made more portable, expect no errors.
  439. Changes for the programmer:
  440. * Sources have been fully reindented to comply with GNU standards, and
  441. cleaned up in many ways.
  442. * Sources have been protoized. Non-ANSI compilers are automatically
  443. detected, then sources are unprotoized on the fly before compilation.
  444. * GNU m4 uses newer versions of obstack, regex, getopt, etc.
  445. Version 1.0 - October 1991, by Rene' Seindal
  446. * Uses GNU configure, taken from the gdb distribution.
  447. * Uses GNU getopt(), with long option names.
  448. * The -Q/+quiet option is added, which suppresses warnings about missing
  449. or superflous arguments to built-in macros.
  450. * Added default options via the M4OPTS environment variable.
  451. * Several minor bugs have been fixed.
  452. Version 0.99 - July 1991, by Rene' Seindal
  453. * The builtins `incr' and `decr' are now implemented without use of
  454. `eval'.
  455. * The builtin `indir' is added, to allow for indirect macro calls
  456. (allows use of "illegal" macro names).
  457. * The debugging and tracing facilities has been enhanced considerably.
  458. See the manual for details.
  459. * The -tMACRO option is added, marks MACRO for tracing as soon as it
  460. is defined.
  461. * Builtins are traced after renaming iff they were before.
  462. * Named files can now be undiverted.
  463. * The -Nnum option can be used to increase the number of divertions
  464. available.
  465. * Calling changecom without arguments now disables all comment handling.
  466. * A bug in `dnl' is fixed.
  467. * A bug in the multi-character quoting code is fixed.
  468. * Several typos in the manual has been corrected. More probably persist.
  469. Version 0.75 - November 1990, by Rene' Seindal
  470. * Implemented search path for include files (-I option and M4PATH
  471. environment variable).
  472. * Implemented builtin `format' for printf-like formatting.
  473. * Implemented builtin `regexp' for searching for regular expressions.
  474. * Implemented builtin `patsubst' for substitution with regular
  475. expressions.
  476. * Implemented builtin `esyscmd', which expands to a shell commands output.
  477. * Implemented `__file__' and `__line__' for use in error messages.
  478. * Implemented character ranges in `translit'.
  479. * Implemented control over debugging output.
  480. * Implemented multi-character quotes.
  481. * Implemented multi-character comment delimiters.
  482. * Changed predefined macro `gnu' to `__gnu__'.
  483. * Changed predefined macro `unix' to `__unix__', when the -G option is
  484. not used. With -G, `unix' is still defined.
  485. * Added program name to error messages.
  486. * Fixed two missing null bytes bugs.
  487. Version 0.50 - January 1990, by Rene' Seindal
  488. * Initial beta release.
  489. ========================================================================
  490. Local Variables:
  491. mode: outline
  492. fill-column: 75
  493. End:
  494. Copyright (C) 1992-1994, 2004-2014, 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  495. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
  496. under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
  497. any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
  498. Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
  499. Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
  500. Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.