examples of m4 with vim

[Marc Chantreux]

hi,

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 05:51:50PM -0700, M.R.P. zensky wrote:
> Hello I am wondering if m4 can be used with the text editor vim?

as vim is a text editor and m4 is a text processor, the anwser is yes.

> How would this be implemented?

i guess the question is 'how to use m4 from vi(m)?'.

vi provides the ability to use pipes (noted !) to write, read and filter
(read :help !). So imagine you have a `startmemo' file in your M4PATH
with this code:

ifdef(`TL',,`define(`TL',`my title here')')dnl
.`T'L TL
.AST résumé
.AS
.AE

from vi, you can type this command:

    :r !m4 -DTL="my humble contrib" startmemo

to get this in your buffer

.TL my humble contrib
.AST résumé
.AS
.AE

so if you have a file memohelpers with

define(`memo',`.TL $1
.AST résumé
.AS
.AE')dnl

then you can write into your vim buffer

memo(`the power of small things')

then filter it with

    :.!m4 memohelpers -

to get

hello
.TL the power of small things
.AST résumé
.AS
.AE

you can also write in a pipe to print some informations:

this command shows basic stats on your file (the buffer remains
untouched).

%w !awk '/^[^.]/ {words+=NF} END {print words" words, "NR" lines"}'

HTH
regards,
marc