http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=904704


in reply to Re: Template Modules in Core
in thread Template Modules in Core

Big ups m4! (m4 is the C-preprocessor) Update: or is it...? D'oh! no it's not! It's a macro language that, I think, originally came with sendmail... I suck!

http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/m4.html

I use m4 all the time for random stuff. I find it's best for jobs that require you to type the same or similar stuff over.. and over.. and over.. but not so good for stuff that requires calculating something. EG my nagios configs are really repetitive, so m4=good. Making a dynamic web page: m4=not-so-good. A good mix would be a perl script that generates an m4 file full of definitions which m4 places in the result files. Aaannd of course you'd have a Makefile to make that easy to use. Aaaand you'd use m4 to make the Makefile less of a hastle... Aaaand you'd use perl to make the m4 less dumb....

Hmm...

Yeah, usually around this point I realise I should have stayed away from m4...

Did I mention that I suck...?