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2.1 Command line options for operation modes

Several options control the overall operation of m4:

--help
Print a help summary on standard output, then immediately exit m4 without reading any input files or performing any other actions.
--version
Print the version number of the program on standard output, then immediately exit m4 without reading any input files or performing any other actions.
-E
--fatal-warnings
Stop execution and exit m4 once the first warning has been issued, considering all of them to be fatal.
-i
--interactive
-e
Makes this invocation of m4 interactive. This means that all output will be unbuffered, and interrupts will be ignored. The spelling -e exists for compatibility with other m4 implementations, and issues a warning because it may be withdrawn in a future version of GNU M4.
-P
--prefix-builtins
Internally modify all builtin macro names so they all start with the prefix `m4_'. For example, using this option, one should write `m4_define' instead of `define', and `m4___file__' instead of `__file__'. This option has no effect if -R is also specified.
-Q
--quiet
--silent
Suppress warnings, such as missing or superfluous arguments in macro calls, or treating the empty string as zero.
-W REGEXP
--word-regexp=REGEXP
Use REGEXP as an alternative syntax for macro names. This experimental option will not be present in all GNU m4 implementations (see Changeword).