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Re: named arguments in m4?
From: |
Gary V. Vaughan |
Subject: |
Re: named arguments in m4? |
Date: |
Mon, 21 Apr 2014 22:53:37 +0700 |
> On Apr 21, 2014, at 7:19 PM, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> On 04/20/2014 04:36 PM, Daniel Goldman wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Any chance m4 could (or would want to) support named arguments? In other
>> environments, I usually prefer named arguments over $n arguments.
>
> Interesting question. The master branch of m4.git (which is currently
> highly experimental and nowhere near a release) agrees with you, and did
> attempt to add named argument support. But we're a long way off from
> ever making it actually useful enough to release; right now, the
> development is focused on the stable branch-1.4 branch.
For the record, the syntax I briefly implemented simply involved defining a
macro
with a parameter list, and then referring to parameters by name in the body of
the
macro:
m4_define(`exch (parm1, parm2)', `$parm2 $parm1')
exch(`foo', `bar')
bar foo
It's still something I'd like to have one day, but I'm not sure I like that
syntax...
Cheers,
--
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)