Documentation

Prepare slides

Testing

Modify 'output_is' such that GNU m4 is only tested when available.

Add tests for new features

Add test for dumping frozen file

Perl5

Create module Language::m4 or Text::m4

Test with Perl 5.005

Features

The features that need to be implemented are arranged by chapters in the GNU m4 documentation.

Chapter 1 Introduction and preliminaries

read from STDIN, when no file is passed

Add some tests with Autoconf macros

Parsing of short options

recognize unambigous long options

Option -G or --traditional

Option -E or --fatal-warnings

Option -d or --debug

Option -l or --arglength

Option -o or --error-output

Option -I or --include

Option -e or --interactive

Option -s or --synclines

Option -P or --prefix-builtins

Option -W or --word-regexp

Option -H or --hash-size

Option -L or --nesting-limit

Option -Q or --quiet or --silent

Option -B, -S, -T

Option -N or --diversions

Option -D or --define

Option -U or --undefine

Option -t or --trace

Chapter 2 Lexical and syntactic conventions

Nested quoted strings

Chapter 3 How to invoke macros

Option -P or --prefix-builtins

trailing whitespace in macro calls

warnings for inappropriate number of arguments

implement option '--changeword'

recognize unquoted parenthesis in macros

Chapter 4 How to define new macros

implement indirect macro calls

implement 'pushdef' and 'popdef'

implement 'defn'

Do 'input_stack' properly

Special arguments to macros

Chapter 5 Conditionals, loops and recursion

implement 'shift'

implement 'ifelse' used as switch

Write tests with recursion

Chapter 6 How to debug macros and input

implement macro 'dumpdef'

Implement debugging options

implement tracing

implement 'debugfile'

Chapter 7 Input control

everything

Chapter 8 File inclusions

File inclusion

include path

implement 'include'

implement 'sinclude'

Chapter 9 Diverting and undiverting output

Diversions

Chapter 10 Macros for text handling

macro b<translit> add as an op or port from GNU m4

macros b<regexp> and b<patsubst> POSIX regexes

Chapter 11 Macros for doing arithmetic

incr, decr of large numbers

radix support for `eval'

Chapter 12 Running UNIX commands

Why isn't there a 'system' in Parrot?

names for temporary files

Chapter 13 Micellaneous builtin Functions

Macro b<__file__>

Macro b<__line__>

Chapter 14 Fast loading of frozen states

more tests

Chapter 15 Compatability with other versions of m4

Document the differences between Parrot m4 and GNU m4

cpanm Ruby

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Ruby