21 Jul
2025
21 Jul
'25
6:37 p.m.
On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 1:32 PM Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Larry McVoy wrote
I do not believe Larry is referring (directly) to M4 with this
comment, but rather, referring to the language he used for the example
he posted earlier, at:
http://mcvoy.com/lm/bkdocs/dspec-changes-json-v.txt
That language is, if I understand correctly, an invention of Larry's,
that drew inspiration from awk, and that he saw as an improvement over
M4 for the purpose of making bitkeeper emit JSON.
- Dan C.
Well, we had begin and end blocks. And other
than that, the whole thing
is a wad that is called per line. That was definitely awk inspired.
The way I have used m4, a program is executed just once from top to bottom.
[snip]