Re: m4 resources on language constructs

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Richard,

Richard Schilling wrote:
> Gary,
> I found yor e-mail on gnu.org/software/m4/m4.html....
> hope you can help...

I wish I could be of more help, but I haven't dug into the internals
of sendmail.  I'm Cc:ing the m4-discuss mailing list incase there is
anyone there who can point you in the right direction.

> I can't find any good references for some of the m4 constructs that
> sendmail uses.  Do you know of any useful resources I could turn to.  I
> need to read the details behind the sendmail variables definitions.

Short of suggesting the ORA book on sendmail or some time with google,
I'm afraid I don't know.

> Specifically, I need to be able to understand the following m4
> statement, which is used to define the sendmail macro confRECEIVED_HEADER:
> 
> $?sfrom $s $.$?_($?s$|from $.$_)
> $.$?{auth_type}(authenticated)
> $.by $j ($v/$Z)$?r with $r$. id $i$?u
> for $u; $|;
> $.$b

That doesn't look like any m4 I've ever seen before, but then m4
is flexible enough that the input syntax can be changed quite radically.
This looks more like configuration magic that is parsed by sendmail
than m4 input to me though.

> can't find any references on m4, or sendmail that even attempts to
> explain the various parts of that statement.  Any help would be
> appreciated.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Richard Schilling
> 206.774.5951

HTH a little,
        Gary.

-- 
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  address@hidden,gnu.org}
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://tkd.kicks-ass.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook

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