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There are a few builtin macros in m4
that allow you to run UNIX
commands from within m4
.
12.1 Executing simple commands 12.2 Reading the output of commands 12.3 Exit codes 12.4 Making names for temporary files
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Any shell command can be executed, using syscmd
:
syscmd(shell-command) |
which executes shell-command as a shell command.
The expansion of syscmd
is void, not the output from
shell-command! Output or error messages from shell-command
are not read by m4
. See section 12.2 Reading the output of commands if you need to process the
command output.
Prior to executing the command, m4
flushes its output buffers.
The default standard input, output and error of shell-command are
the same as those of m4
.
The builtin macro syscmd
is recognized only when given arguments.
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If you want m4
to read the output of a UNIX command, use
esyscmd
:
esyscmd(shell-command) |
which expands to the standard output of the shell command shell-command.
Prior to executing the command, m4
flushes its output buffers.
The default standard input and error output of shell-command are
the same as those of m4
. The error output of shell-command
is not a part of the expansion: it will appear along with the error
output of m4
.
Assume you are positioned into the `checks' directory of GNU
m4
distribution, then:
define(`vice', `esyscmd(grep Vice ../COPYING)') => vice => Ty Coon, President of Vice => |
Note how the expansion of esyscmd
has a trailing newline.
The builtin macro esyscmd
is recognized only when given
arguments.
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To see whether a shell command succeeded, use sysval
:
sysval |
which expands to the exit status of the last shell command run with
syscmd
or esyscmd
.
syscmd(`false') => ifelse(sysval, 0, zero, non-zero) =>non-zero syscmd(`true') => sysval =>0 |
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Commands specified to syscmd
or esyscmd
might need a
temporary file, for output or for some other purpose.
There is a builtin macro, maketemp
, for making temporary file
names:
maketemp(template) |
which expands to a name of a non-existent file, made from the string
template, which should end with the string `XXXXXX'. The six
X
's are then replaced, usually with something that includes the
process id of the m4
process, in order to make the filename unique.
maketemp(`/tmp/fooXXXXXX') =>/tmp/fooa07346 maketemp(`/tmp/fooXXXXXX') =>/tmp/fooa07346 |
As seen in the example, several calls of maketemp
might expand to
the same string, since the selection criteria is whether the file exists
or not. If a file has not been created before the next call, the two
macro calls might expand to the same name.
The builtin macro maketemp
is recognized only when given
arguments.
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