| GNU M4 NEWS - User visible changes. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.18 (2016-12-31) [stable] |
| |
| ** Diagnose --word-regexp as unsupported if it was not configured. |
| |
| ** Preliminary support for OS/2. |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.17 (2013-09-22) [stable] |
| |
| ** Fix compilation with newer glibc headers. |
| |
| ** Fix a failure with diverting large amounts of text on mingw (does |
| not affect platforms that can rename an open file). |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.16 (2011-03-01) [stable] |
| |
| ** Fix regressions in the `index' builtin. On glibc platforms, this |
| avoids false positives from a strstr bug in glibc 2.9 through 2.12; |
| on many other platforms, it fixes two separate regressions, a false |
| positive introduced in 1.4.11 and a false negative in 1.4.15. |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in release 1.4.15 (2010-08-31) [stable] |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b where the `format' builtin could |
| crash on an invalid format string. |
| |
| ** Fix compilation against newer glibc, and on AIX 7.1BETA. |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.14 (2010-02-24) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.13.* |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.12 where executing with stdout closed |
| could crash m4 on exit on some platforms. |
| |
| ** Fix regressions introduced in 1.4.13 in the `esyscmd' builtin, where |
| closed file descriptors could interfere with child execution, and where |
| a child status of 127 made m4 print a spurious message to stderr. |
| |
| ** Fix a security hole in 'make dist', present since at least M4 1.4, that |
| could affect anybody attempting to redistribute modified sources (see |
| Automake CVE-2009-4029). |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.13 (2009-04-01) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.12.* |
| |
| ** The manual is now distributed under the terms of FDL 1.3. |
| |
| ** The `divert' and `undivert' builtins have been made more efficient |
| when using temporary files for large diversions. |
| |
| ** The `translit' builtin has been made more efficient when the second |
| argument is short. |
| |
| ** The input engine has been optimized for faster processing. |
| |
| ** The command line option `--debugfile', introduced in 1.4.7, now |
| treats its argument as optional, in order to allow setting the debug |
| output back to stderr when used without an argument; and order is now |
| significant with respect to command line files. You must therefore use |
| `m4 --debugfile=trace file', not `m4 file --debugfile trace'. This |
| change does not affect the deprecated `-o'/`--error-output' option. |
| |
| ** The `syscmd' and `esyscmd' builtins can be configured to use an |
| alternate shell, via the new `configure' option `--with-syscmd-shell'. |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.12 (2008-10-10) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.11.* |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.4b where using `traceon' could delete |
| a macro. This was most noticeable with `traceon(`traceon')', but |
| would also happen in cases such as `foo(traceon(`foo'))'. |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.7 where `m4 -N9' died with an assertion |
| failure. |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.11 where `defn' died with an assertion |
| failure on a traced but undefined macro. |
| |
| ** New `-g'/`--gnu' command-line option overrides `-G'/`--traditional'. |
| For now, the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT has no effect on M4 |
| behavior; but a future release of M4 will behave as though --traditional |
| is implied if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set (this future change is necessary, |
| because in the current release, there is no way to disable GNU |
| extensions that conflict with POSIX without the use of a non-POSIX |
| command-line argument). Clients of M4 that want to use GNU extensions, |
| even when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, should start using the -g command-line |
| argument, even though it is currently a no-op if -G did not appear |
| earlier in the command line, so that the client will not break in the |
| face of an upgraded m4 and a POSIXLY_CORRECT execution environment. |
| |
| ** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command-line option now defaults to 0 for |
| unlimited on platforms that can detect and deal with stack overflow. On |
| systems that lack alternate stack support, such as Cygwin, and on |
| systems that do not obey the POSIX semantics for distinguishing stack |
| overflow from other exceptions, such as Linux, you can optionally |
| install the libsigsegv library (version 2.6 or newer recommended) to |
| enhance m4's ability to accurately report stack overflow: |
| http://www.gnu.org/software/libsigsegv/ |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.11 (2008-04-02) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on git version 1.4.10a |
| |
| ** Security fixes for the -F option, for bugs present since -F was |
| introduced in 1.3: Avoid core dump with 'm4 -F file -t undefined', and |
| avoid arbitrary code execution with certain file names. |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9b in the `divert' builtin when more |
| than 512 kibibytes are saved in diversions on platforms like NetBSD |
| or darwin where fopen(name,"a+") seeks to the end of the file. |
| |
| ** The output of the `maketemp' and `mkstemp' builtins is now quoted if a |
| file was created. This is a minor security fix, because it was possible |
| (although rather unlikely) that an unquoted string could match an |
| existing macro name, such that use of the `mkstemp' output would trigger |
| inadvertent macro expansion and operate on the wrong file name. |
| |
| ** Enhance the `defn' builtin to support concatenation of multiple text |
| arguments, as required by POSIX. However, at this time, it is not |
| possible to concatenate a builtin macro with anything else; a warning is |
| now issued if this is attempted, although a future version of M4 may |
| lift this restriction to match other implementations. |
| |
| ** Enhance the `format' builtin to parse all C99 floating point numbers, |
| even on platforms where strtod(3) is buggy, although the replacement |
| function does have the known issue of rounding errors when parsing |
| some decimal floating point values. This fixes testsuite failures |
| introduced in 1.4.9b. |
| |
| ** Enhance the `index' builtin to guarantee linear behavior, in spite of |
| the surprisingly large number of systems with a brain-dead quadratic |
| strstr(3). |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.10 (2007-07-09) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.9c |
| |
| ** Upgrade from GPL version 2 to GPL version 3 or later. |
| |
| ** A number of portability improvements inherited from gnulib. |
| |
| ** Avoid undefined behavior introduced in 1.4.9b in the `format' builtin |
| when handling %c. However, this area of code has never been documented, |
| and currently does not match the POSIX behavior of printf(1), so it may |
| have further changes in the next version. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.9b (2007-05-29) [beta] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.9a |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.9 in the `eval' builtin when performing |
| division. |
| |
| ** Fix regression introduced in 1.4.8 in the `-F' option that made it |
| impossible to freeze more than 512 kibibytes of diverted text. |
| |
| ** The synclines option `-s' no longer generates sync lines in the middle of |
| multiline comments or quoted strings. |
| |
| ** Work around a number of corner-case POSIX compliance bugs in various |
| broken stdio libraries. In particular, the `syscmd' builtin behaves |
| more predictably when stdin is seekable. |
| |
| ** The `format' builtin now understands formats such as %a, %A, and %'hhd, |
| and works around a number of platform printf bugs. Furthermore, the |
| sequence format(%*.*d,-1,-1,1) no longer outputs random data. However, |
| some non-compliant platforms such as mingw still have known bugs in |
| strtod that may cause testsuite failures. |
| |
| ** The testsuite is improved to also run gnulib portability tests for the |
| features that M4 imports from gnulib. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.9 (2007-03-23) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.8c |
| |
| ** Minor documentation and portability cleanups. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.8b (2007-02-24) [beta] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.8a |
| |
| ** Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 unable to process |
| files larger than 2GiB on some platforms. |
| |
| ** Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 dump core when |
| invoked as 'm4 -- file'. |
| |
| ** The `eval' builtin now follows C precedence rules. Additionally, the |
| short-circuit operators correctly short-circuit division by zero. The |
| previously undocumented alias of '=' meaning '==' in eval now triggers a |
| deprecation warning, so that a future version of M4 can implement a form |
| of variable assignment as an extension. |
| |
| ** The `include' builtin now affects exit status on failure, as required by |
| POSIX. Use `sinclude' if you need a successful exit status. |
| |
| ** The `-E'/`--fatal-warnings' command-line option now has two levels. When |
| specified only once, warnings affect exit status, but execution |
| continues, so that you can see all warnings instead of fixing them one |
| at a time. To achieve 1.4.8 behavior, where the first warning |
| immediately exits, specify -E twice on the command line. |
| |
| ** A new `--warn-macro-sequence' command-line option allows detection of |
| sequences in `define' and `pushdef' definitions that match an optional |
| regular expression. The default regular expression is |
| `\$\({[^}]*}\|[0-9][0-9]+\)', corresponding to the sequences that might |
| not behave correctly when upgrading to the eventual M4 2.0. By default, |
| M4 2.0 will follow the POSIX requirement that a macro definition |
| containing `$11' must expand to the first argument concatenated with 1, |
| rather than the eleventh argument; and will take advantage of the POSIX |
| wording that allows implementations to treat `${11}' as the eleventh |
| argument instead of literal text. Be aware that Autoconf 2.61 will not |
| work with this option enabled with the default regular expression; but |
| Autoconf 2.62 will be compatible with this option. |
| |
| ** Improved portability to platforms such as BSD/OS and AIX. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.8 (2006-11-20) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.7a |
| |
| ** The `divert' macro and `-H'/`--hashsize' command line option no longer |
| cause a core dump when handed extra large values. Also, `divert' now |
| uses memory proportional to the number of diversions in use, rather than |
| to the maximum diversion number encountered, so that large diversion |
| numbers are less likely to exhaust system memory; and is no longer |
| limited by the maximum number of file descriptors. |
| |
| ** The `--help' and `--version' command line options now consistently |
| override all earlier options. For example, `m4 --debugfile=trace |
| --help' now no longer accidentally creates an empty file `trace'. |
| |
| ** The `-L'/`--nesting-limit' command line option can now be set to 0 |
| to remove the default limit of 1024. However, it is still possible that |
| heavily nested input can cause abrupt program termination due to stack |
| overflow. |
| |
| ** Problems encountered when writing to standard error, such as with the |
| `errprint' macro, now always cause a non-zero exit status. |
| |
| ** Warnings and errors issued during macro expansion are now consistently |
| reported at the line where the macro name was detected, rather than |
| where the close parenthesis resides. Text wrapped by `m4wrap' now |
| remembers the location that was in effect when m4wrap was invoked, |
| rather than changing to line 0 and the empty string for a file. The |
| macros `__line__' and `__file__' now work correctly even as the last |
| token in an included file. |
| |
| ** The `builtin' and `indir' macros now transparently handle builtin |
| tokens generated by `defn'. |
| |
| ** When diversions created by the `divert' macro collect enough text that |
| M4 must use temporary files, the environment variable $TMPDIR is now |
| consulted, and a better effort is made to clean up those files in the |
| event of a fatal signal. |
| |
| ** The `mkstemp' builtin is added with the same GNU semantics as `maketemp', |
| based on the recommendation of POSIX to deprecate the POSIX semantics of |
| `maketemp' as inherently insecure. In GNU mode (no -G supplied on the |
| command line), `maketemp' silently retains the secure GNU semantics, but |
| a future release of M4 will change this to emit a warning. In |
| traditional mode (m4 -G), `maketemp' now uses the POSIX-mandated |
| insecure semantics, and issues a warning that you should convert your |
| script to use `mkstemp' instead. Additionally, `mkstemp' and `maketemp' |
| are now well-defined even if the template argument does not end in six |
| `X' characters. |
| |
| ** The manual has been improved, including a new section on a composite |
| macro `foreach'. |
| |
| ** The `changecom' and `changequote' macros now treat an empty second |
| argument the same as if it were missing, rather than using the empty |
| string and making it impossible to end a comment or quote. |
| |
| ** The `translit' macro now operates in linear instead of quadratic time, |
| and is now eight-bit clean. |
| |
| ** The `-D', `-U', `-s', and `-t' command line options now take effect |
| after any files encountered earlier on the command line, rather than up |
| front, as is done in traditional implementations and required by POSIX. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.7 (2006-09-25) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.6a |
| |
| ** Fix regression from 1.4.5 in handling a file that ends in a macro |
| expansion without arguments instead of a newline. |
| |
| ** The define and pushdef macros now warn when the first argument is not |
| a string, rather than silently doing nothing. |
| |
| ** Standard input can now be read more than once, as in 'm4 - file -', and |
| is not closed until all wrapped text is handled. This makes a |
| difference when stdin is not a regular file, and also fixes bugs when |
| using the syscmd or esyscmd macros from wrapped text. |
| |
| ** When standard input is a seekable file, the m4exit, syscmd, and esyscmd |
| macros now restore the current position to the next unread byte rather |
| than discarding an arbitrary amount of buffered data. |
| |
| ** SysV command-line compatibility is no longer a goal of GNU M4; the |
| focus will be instead on POSIX compatibility. This release continues to |
| support previous usage, but adds warnings in areas which will allow a |
| future version of GNU M4 to use its own extensions without being tied to |
| the SysV command line interface. |
| |
| ** The no-op compatibility command line options -B, -N, -S, -T, and |
| --diversions may be withdrawn or assigned new meanings in future |
| releases, so they now issue a warning if used. |
| |
| ** A new command line option -i replaces the compatibility -e as the |
| short spelling of --interactive, for consistency with other GNU tools; a |
| warning is issued if the old spelling is used, and it may be assigned |
| new meaning in future releases. |
| |
| ** A new command line option --debugfile replaces the options -o and |
| --error-output as the preferred spelling. The old options were |
| misleading in their names and inconsistent with other GNU tools; they |
| are still silently accepted, but no longer documented in --help, and may |
| be assigned new meanings in future releases. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.6 (2006-08-25) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.5a |
| |
| ** Fix buffer overruns in regexp and patsubst macros when handed a trailing |
| backslash in the replacement text, or when handling \n substitutions |
| beyond the number of \(\) groups. |
| |
| ** Fix memory leak in regexp, patsubst, and changeword macros. |
| |
| ** The format macro now understands %F, %g, and %G. |
| |
| ** When loading frozen files, m4 now exits with status 63 if version |
| mismatch is detected. |
| |
| ** Fix bugs that occurred when invoked with stdout or stderr closed, |
| and detect write failures to stdout or to the target of the debugfile |
| macro. In particular, the syscmd and esyscmd macros can no longer |
| interfere with the debug stream or diversions. |
| |
| ** The m4exit macro now converts values outside the range 0-255 to 1. |
| |
| ** It is now an error if a command-line input file ends in the middle of a |
| comment, matching the behavior of mid-string and mid-argument |
| collection. |
| |
| ** The dnl macro now warns if end of file is encountered instead of a |
| newline. |
| |
| ** The error message when end of file is encountered now uses the file and |
| line where the dangling construct started, rather than `NONE:0:'. |
| |
| ** The debugmode and __file__ macros, and the -s/--synclines option, now |
| show what directory a file was found in when the -I/--include option or |
| M4PATH variable had an effect. |
| |
| ** The changequote and changecom macros now work with 8-bit characters, and |
| quotes and comments that begin with `(' are properly recognized |
| following a word. |
| |
| ** The new macro __program__ is added, which allows the input file to issue |
| an error message that resembles messages from m4. Warning and error |
| messages have been reformatted to comply with GNU Coding Standards. |
| |
| ** The errprint, m4wrap, and shift macros are now recognized only with |
| arguments. |
| |
| ** The index, substr, translit, regexp, and patsubst macros now produce |
| output when given only one argument, but still warn about a missing |
| second argument. |
| |
| ** The patsubst macro now reliably finds zero-length matches at the end |
| of a string. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.5 (2006-07-15) [stable] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.4c |
| |
| ** Fix sysval on BeOS, OS/2, and other systems that store exit status |
| in the low-order byte. Additionally, on Unix platforms, if syscmd was |
| terminated by a signal, sysval now displays the signal number shifted |
| left by eight bits, to match traditional m4 implementations. |
| |
| ** The maketemp macro is no longer subject to platform limitations (such as |
| 26 or 32 max files from a given template). |
| |
| ** Frozen files now require that the first directive be V (version), to |
| better diagnose version mismatch. Additionally, if the F directive |
| (builtin function) names an unknown builtin that existed in the m4 that |
| froze the file but not in the current m4 (for example, changeword), the |
| warning is deferred until an attempt is made to actually use the |
| builtin. This allows downgrading from beta m4-1.4o to stable m4-1.4.5 |
| without breaking autoconf. |
| |
| ** The format and indir macros are now recognized only with arguments. |
| |
| ** The eval macro no longer crashes on x86 architectures when dividing the |
| minimum integer by -1. |
| |
| ** On systems with ecvt and fcvt, format no longer truncates trailing |
| zeroes on integers printed with %.0f. On systems without these |
| functions, format is no longer subject to a buffer overflow that |
| permitted arbitrary code execution. |
| |
| ** On native Windows builds, the macro __windows__ is provided instead of |
| __unix__. Likewise, on OS/2 builds, the macro __os2__ is provided. |
| This allows input files to determine when syscmd might behave |
| differently. |
| |
| ** Fix bug in 1.4.3 patch to use \n line-endings that did not work for |
| cygwin. |
| |
| ** When given the empty string or 0, undivert is now documented as a no-op |
| rather than closing stdout, warning about a non-existent file, or trying |
| to read a directory as a file. |
| |
| ** Many documentation improvements. Also, the manual is now distributed |
| under FDL 1.2, rather than a stricter verbatim-only license. |
| |
| ** Raise the -L (--nesting-limit) command line option limit from 250 to |
| 1024. |
| |
| ** The decr, incr, divert, m4exit, and substr macros treat an empty number |
| as 0, issue a warning, and expand as normal; rather than issuing an |
| error and expanding to the empty string. |
| |
| ** The eval macro now treats an empty radix argument as 10, handles radix 1, |
| and treats the width argument as number of digits excluding the sign, |
| for compatibility with other m4 implementations. |
| |
| ** The ifdef, divert, m4exit, substr, and translit macros now correctly |
| ignore extra arguments. |
| |
| ** The popdef and undefine macros now correctly accept multiple arguments. |
| |
| ** Although changeword is on its last leg, if enabled, it now reverts to the |
| default (faster) regexp when passed the empty string. |
| |
| ** The regexp and substr macros now warn and ignore a trailing backslash in |
| the replacement, and warn on \n for n larger than the number of |
| sub-expressions in the regexp. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.4b (2006-06-17) [beta] |
| Released by Eric Blake, based on CVS version 1.4.4a |
| |
| ** Fix a recursive push_string crashing bug, which affected changequote of |
| three or more characters on some compilers. |
| |
| ** Use automake to fix build portability issues. |
| |
| ** Fix a recursive m4wrap crashing bug. |
| |
| ** Fix a 1 in 2**32 hash crashing bug. |
| |
| ** Tracing a macro by name is now persistent, even if the macro is |
| subsequently undefined or redefined. The traceon and traceoff macros no |
| longer warn about undefined symbols. This solves a crash when using |
| indir on an undefined macro traced with the -t option, as well as an |
| incorrect result of ifdef. Furthermore, tracing is no longer |
| transferred with builtins, solving the bug of "m4 -tm4_eval" failing to |
| give trace output on the input |
| "define(`m4_eval',defn(`eval'))m4_eval(1)". |
| |
| ** Fix a crash when a macro is undefined while collecting its arguments, by |
| always using the definition that was in effect before argument |
| collection. This behavior matches the C pre-processor, and means that |
| the sequence "define(`f',`1')f(define(`f',`2'))f" is now documented to |
| result in "12", rather than the previously undocumented "22". |
| |
| ** Update the regex engine to fix several bugs. |
| |
| ** Fix a potential crash on machines where char is signed. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.4 (Oct 2005) [stable] |
| Released by Gary V. Vaughan |
| |
| ** ./configure --infodir=/usr/share/info now works correctly. |
| |
| ** When any file named on the command line is missing exit with status 1. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.3 (Mar 2005) [stable] |
| Released by Gary V. Vaughan |
| |
| ** DESTDIR installs now work correctly. |
| |
| ** Don't segfault with uncompilable regexps to changeword(). |
| |
| ** Always use \n line-endings for frozen files (fixes a Windows bug). |
| |
| ** Portability fix for systems lacking mkstemp(3). |
| |
| ** Approximately 20% speed up in the common case of usage with autoconf. |
| |
| ** Supported on QNX 6.3. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.2 (Aug 2004) [stable] |
| Released by Paul Eggert |
| |
| ** No user visible changes; portability bug fixes only. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4.1 (Jun 2004) [stable] |
| Released by Paul Eggert |
| |
| ** maketemp now creates an empty file with the given name, instead of merely |
| returning the name of a nonexistent file. This closes a security hole. |
| |
| * Noteworthy changes in Version 1.4 (Oct 1994) [stable] |
| Released by Franc,ois Pinard |
| |
| ** (No user visible changes) |
| |
| |
| Version 1.3 - September 1994, by Franc,ois Pinard |
| |
| * Diversions are created as needed. Option `-N' is still accepted, but |
| otherwise ignored. Users should use only negative diversion numbers, |
| instead of high positive numbers, for diverting to nowhere. |
| |
| * Diversions should also work faster. No temporary files will be needed |
| at all if all diversions taken altogether do not use more than 512K. |
| |
| * Frozen state files may be produced with the `--freeze-state' (-F) |
| option and later brought back through the `--reload-state' (-R) option. |
| |
| Version 1.2 - July 1994, by Franc,ois Pinard |
| |
| * In patsubst(STRING, REGEXP, REPLACEMENT), \& in REPLACEMENT has been |
| changed to represent this part of STRING matched by the whole REGEXP, |
| instead of the whole STRING as before. \0 does the same, but emits a |
| diagnostic saying it will disappear in some subsequent release. |
| |
| * eval(EXPR) emits a diagnostic if EXPR has suffixed crumb. The same for |
| other numeric conversions in incr(), decr(), divert(), etc. |
| |
| * `--fatal-warnings' (-E) stops execution at first warning. |
| |
| * `--nesting-limit=LEVEL' (-L LEVEL) sets a limit to macro nesting. |
| It is initially fixed at 250. |
| |
| * `--word-regexp=REGEXP' (-W REGEXP) modifies macro name syntax, like |
| does the new `changeword(REGEXP)' macro. This feature is experimental, |
| tell me your opinions about it. You do need --enable-changeword at |
| configure time to get these things. Do *not* depend on them yet. |
| |
| * Trace output format is scannable by GNU Emacs' next-error function. |
| |
| * Stack overflow is detected and diagnosed on some capable systems. |
| |
| * Various bugs have been corrected, m4 should be more portable. See the |
| ChangeLog for details. |
| |
| Version 1.1 - November 1993, by Franc,ois Pinard |
| |
| Changes which might affect existing GNU m4 scripts: |
| |
| * Option `-V' has been removed, use `--version' instead. `--version' |
| writes on standard output instead of standard error, and inhibits any |
| script execution. |
| |
| * `--no-gnu-extensions' has been renamed `--traditional'. |
| |
| * In `eval', `^' used to indicate exponentiation, use `**' instead. |
| |
| * The automatic undiversion which takes place at end of all input is |
| forced into the main output stream. |
| |
| Changes which are unlikely to affect existing scripts: |
| |
| * `--help' prints an usage summary on standard output. Script execution |
| is then inhibited. |
| |
| * `--prefix-builtins' (-P) prefixes all builtin macros by `m4_'. |
| |
| * Most builtin macros for which arguments are mandatory, called without |
| any arguments, are no more recognized as builtin macros: they are |
| consequently copied verbatim to the output stream. |
| |
| * `define' and `pushdef' are usable with only one argument, they give |
| this argument an empty definition. |
| |
| * `eval' new operators for binary representation handling: `^' for |
| exclusive-or, `~' for the bitwise negation, `<<' and `>>' for shifts. |
| |
| * `eval' recognizes the notation 0bDIGITS for binary numbers and the |
| notation 0rRADIX:DIGITS for numbers in any radix from 1 to 36. |
| |
| Version 1.0.3 - December 1992, by Franc,ois Pinard |
| |
| Changes for the user: |
| |
| * `dnl' outputs a diagnostic if immediately followed by `('. Usually, |
| `dnl' is followed by newline or whitespace. |
| |
| * `ifelse' accepts without complaining the common idiom of having only |
| one argument. This is useful for introducing long comments. |
| |
| * `eval' always expresses values as signed, whatever the radix. |
| |
| * M4OPTS environment variable is no longer obeyed. |
| |
| * `--no-warnings' option is renamed `--silent'. |
| |
| * Debug lines use a new format more compatible with GNU standards. |
| |
| * Various bugs have been corrected. See the ChangeLog for details. |
| |
| Changes for the installer: |
| |
| * GNU m4 now uses an Autoconf-generated configure script, and should be |
| more easily portable in many ways. (Cray is not supported yet). |
| |
| * `make check' has been made more portable, expect no errors. |
| |
| Changes for the programmer: |
| |
| * Sources have been fully reindented to comply with GNU standards, and |
| cleaned up in many ways. |
| |
| * Sources have been protoized. Non-ANSI compilers are automatically |
| detected, then sources are unprotoized on the fly before compilation. |
| |
| * GNU m4 uses newer versions of obstack, regex, getopt, etc. |
| |
| Version 1.0 - October 1991, by Rene' Seindal |
| |
| * Uses GNU configure, taken from the gdb distribution. |
| |
| * Uses GNU getopt(), with long option names. |
| |
| * The -Q/+quiet option is added, which suppresses warnings about missing |
| or superflous arguments to built-in macros. |
| |
| * Added default options via the M4OPTS environment variable. |
| |
| * Several minor bugs have been fixed. |
| |
| Version 0.99 - July 1991, by Rene' Seindal |
| |
| * The builtins `incr' and `decr' are now implemented without use of |
| `eval'. |
| |
| * The builtin `indir' is added, to allow for indirect macro calls |
| (allows use of "illegal" macro names). |
| |
| * The debugging and tracing facilities has been enhanced considerably. |
| See the manual for details. |
| |
| * The -tMACRO option is added, marks MACRO for tracing as soon as it |
| is defined. |
| |
| * Builtins are traced after renaming iff they were before. |
| |
| * Named files can now be undiverted. |
| |
| * The -Nnum option can be used to increase the number of divertions |
| available. |
| |
| * Calling changecom without arguments now disables all comment handling. |
| |
| * A bug in `dnl' is fixed. |
| |
| * A bug in the multi-character quoting code is fixed. |
| |
| * Several typos in the manual has been corrected. More probably persist. |
| |
| Version 0.75 - November 1990, by Rene' Seindal |
| |
| * Implemented search path for include files (-I option and M4PATH |
| environment variable). |
| |
| * Implemented builtin `format' for printf-like formatting. |
| |
| * Implemented builtin `regexp' for searching for regular expressions. |
| |
| * Implemented builtin `patsubst' for substitution with regular |
| expressions. |
| |
| * Implemented builtin `esyscmd', which expands to a shell commands output. |
| |
| * Implemented `__file__' and `__line__' for use in error messages. |
| |
| * Implemented character ranges in `translit'. |
| |
| * Implemented control over debugging output. |
| |
| * Implemented multi-character quotes. |
| |
| * Implemented multi-character comment delimiters. |
| |
| * Changed predefined macro `gnu' to `__gnu__'. |
| |
| * Changed predefined macro `unix' to `__unix__', when the -G option is |
| not used. With -G, `unix' is still defined. |
| |
| * Added program name to error messages. |
| |
| * Fixed two missing null bytes bugs. |
| |
| Version 0.50 - January 1990, by Rene' Seindal |
| |
| * Initial beta release. |
| |
| ======================================================================== |
| |
| Local Variables: |
| mode: outline |
| fill-column: 75 |
| End: |
| |
| Copyright (C) 1992-1994, 2004-2014, 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| |
| Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document |
| under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or |
| any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no |
| Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover |
| Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free |
| Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution. |