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To fully understand where proper quotation is important, you first need
to know what are the special characters in Autoconf: `#' introduces
a comment inside which no macro expansion is performed, `,'
separates arguments, `[' and `]' are the quotes themselves,
and finally `(' and `)' (which m4 tries to match by
pairs).
In order to understand the delicate case of macro calls, we first have to present some obvious failures. Below they are "obvious-ified", although you find them in real life, they are usually in disguise.
Comments, introduced by a hash and running up to the newline, are opaque tokens to the top level: active characters are turned off, and there is no macro expansion:
# define([def], ine) =># define([def], ine)
Each time there can be a macro expansion, there is a quotation expansion; i.e., one level of quotes is stripped:
int tab[10]; =>int tab10; [int tab[10];] =>int tab[10];
Without this in mind, the reader will try hopelessly to use her macro
array:
define([array], [int tab[10];]) array =>int tab10; [array] =>array
How can you correctly output the intended results(2)?
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