Re^2: Template Modules in Core

[pileofrogs]

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...?

[anonymized user 468275]

m4 has indeed become more popular even on non-linux platforms. Although it isn't the cpp, it is certainly descended from it. It can be awkard with Perl templating because Perl has a much too flexible syntax. But for that reason Perl needs it the least. However, I can't see any problem using m4 or the cpp with say HTML templating - no conflict of syntax for example.