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Evaluation Macros

The following macros give some control over the order of the evaluation by adding or removing levels of quotes. They are meant for hard core M4 programmers.

m4_dquote (arg1, ...) Macro
Return the arguments as a quoted list of quoted arguments.

m4_quote (arg1, ...) Macro
Return the arguments as a single entity, i.e., wrap them into a pair of quotes.

The following example aims at emphasing the difference between (i), not using these macros, (ii), using m4_quote, and (iii), using m4_dquote. 

$ cat example.m4
# Over quote, so that quotes are visible.
m4_define([show], [$[]1 = [$1], $[]@ = [$@]])
m4_divert(0)dnl
show(a, b)
show(m4_quote(a, b))
show(m4_dquote(a, b))
$ autom4te -l m4sugar example.m4
$1 = a, $@ = [a],[b]
$1 = a,b, $@ = [a,b]
$1 = [a],[b], $@ = [[a],[b]]