URL: <https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?110930>
Summary: Have way for --synclines output be distinguished from "regular" output Group: GNU M4 Submitter: kop Submitted: Wed 06 Sep 2023 05:42:47 AM UTC Category: None Priority: 5 - Normal Severity: 1 - Wish Status: None Privacy: Public Assigned to: None Originator Email: Open/Closed: Open Discussion Lock: Any Operating System: None _______________________________________________________ Follow-up Comments: ------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed 06 Sep 2023 05:42:47 AM UTC By: Karl O. Pinc <kop> It's trivial for an m4 input file to produce output that looks like output produced by the --synclines flag. It would be nice if there was a guaranteed way to distinguish the two. The obvious approach would be to have something like a --synclines-prefix option, that would allow --synclines output to use it's argument instead of outputting "# lines ...". But that's something of a kludge, the user must know ahead of time what the input files are going to output in order to be sure there are no "collisions". Better might be a way to have --synclines always insert output every-other line. Even "# line" without anything following. Then you'd know that lines with even line numbers were produced by --synclines and lines that have odd line numbers come from the m4 input files. Anyway, design is called for. I've never had an actual problem with this. (On the other hand, bug #110929 has prevented me from really using --synclines.) It might be best to wait until the feature is actually needed. My use of --synclines would be to produce a file containing lines that map output lines to input files/lines, like: output line NNN is line YYY of file XYZ for every line of the m4 output. So what I _really_ want for my wishlist is for m4 to produce such syncline-like output _without_ the output the files processed by m4 would normally produce. But I can produce this trivially if I can distinguish between the syncline produced lines and the "regular" m4 output. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?110930> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/