confused by m4 esyscmd expansion ... how to 'escape' nested quotes?

[OpenMacNews]

hi all,

i'm attempting to use m4 to expand/define my machine's IP address for use in 
apache's httpd.conf.

the cmd string:

	% dig @my.ns.domain.com machine.domain.com | grep machine.domain.com | grep -v 
DiG | grep -v ";"machine.domain.com | awk '{print $5}'

works fine @ shell to pick out the IP address for machine.domain.com.

in httpd.conf.m4, i'd then hope to add:

        ...
	define(`MY_IP_ADDR', `esyscmd(dig @my.ns.domain.com machine.domain.com | grep 
machine.domain.com | grep -v DiG | grep -v ";"machine.domain.com | awk '{print 
$5}')')
        ...
        <VirtualHost MY_IP_ADDR:80>
        ...

which, after:

        % m4 httpd.conf.m4 > httpd.conf

would expand to, in httpd.conf, e.g.:

        ...
        <VirtualHost 10.0.0.6:80>
        ...


unfortunately, processing the above results in a processing error of:

        NONE:0: m4: ERROR: EOF in argument list

which seems to be a result of improper escaping of the single- and 
double-quotes at the end of the m4 define, i.e.:


      ... ... ";"machine.domain.com | awk '{print $5}')')
                                          ^          ^ ^

QUESTION:  how would i properly define/escape the esyscmd(arg)? i keep staring 
at the silly thing and am in 'quote catch-22'  8-}


thx,

richard