RE: Potential bug with my --synclines

[Laura Wills]

Eric, 

Do you mind if I ask you another question, while I am putting together the 
testcase?

I am writing a tool which grabs all different macro options in the m4 file and 
then runs a test on each of the possible results. Is there a way for me to do 
this? It can be a parser or an API - or it can just be a simple command that 
returns all macros in the design. 

Here is a quick example ... 

ifelse(FLTVAR_VIEW_lyco_acc_grp7,
        rtl_gb,
        $file1

        ifelse(FLTVAR_VIEW_common,
                skip,
                ,
                $file2
        )
        
        ifelse(FLTVAR_VIEW_eig_common,
                skip,
                ,
                $file3
        )

I am looking to have FLTVAR_VIEW_lyco_acc_grp7=rtl_gb, FLTVAR_VIEW_common=skip, 
and FLTVAR_VIEW_eig_common=skip returned to me, so  I can run m4 (or m4 
--synclines) for each of these possibilities. 

Thanks,
Laura 
        


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Blake <address@hidden> 
Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019 3:46 PM
To: Laura Wills <address@hidden>; address@hidden
Subject: Re: Potential bug with my --synclines

On 6/6/19 2:47 PM, Laura Wills wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am running into an issue with m4 synclines. I have a list of m4 files which 
> point to child m4 files. This reaches a hierarchy level of 12. When I write 
> out a list of these m4 files and one at a time read them with m4 synclines I 
> am able to read them without an issue. When I put this into a recursive loop 
> at some point m4 synclines stops returning any value. The return code does 
> show that an error is occurring, but I cannot determine what the issue is. I 
> have tried the different -debug options, and have had no luck.
> 
> In the recursive function I am getting a list of all included m4 files at the 
> current level, writing them to a file, and then closing that file. Once the 
> file is closed, I recursively call the function on the new list of m4 files.  
> I am using perl `m4 -synclines $infile > $output`.

Can you post actual contents of (a reduced) $infile that reproduce the problem? 
The issue doesn't sound familiar, but I cannot decipher your prose into a 
reproducible case nearly as fast as I could inspect your input files to see if 
there was an obvious problem either in your input files or in m4 itself.

> 
> The version of m4 I am using is 1.4.13. I am running on RHEL6.
> 
> Is this a known issue?
> 
> Thanks,
> Laura
> 
> 

--
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
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