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Re: more m4 underquotations


From: Bruce Korb
Subject: Re: more m4 underquotations
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:44:59 -0800
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (X11/20060911)

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> And frankly, I don't know a good way to make things easier here.
> changequote IMHO isn't one: as soon as you *know* where you would
> have needed it, you can also just use another quoting style.

The complexity stems from both the m4 language choice and
the brevity of the chosen quote markers.  The language issue
is that macros inherit the quote markers from their invocation
environment.  Nothing you can do about that.  (Too late to
choose another language without starting over.)

A better choice on the quote phrase is a possibility, but it
would be a pita to implement.  Still, it would be useful to
bite the bullet and do it.  Two character sequences for open
and close would massively improve the ambiguity, and likely
remove much of the need for those quadrigraphs.

Without that, just use quadrigraphs.  They're uglier than all
get-out, but there's no ambiguity and no issue with stuff getting
evaled too many or too few times.  Or things being "out of balance."
Ambiguity is worse than uglitude.  That's why my macro generators
"quadrifies" most all the supplied text before inserting it into
AC_XXX() macro arguments.

Probably, for the long run, the better choice is the restart-from-
scratch option with a better choice of implementation languages.
Just gotta figure out how to take advantage of the current body of
work.  If only it were simple....

*sigh*.  - Bruce




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