Re: gEDA-user: Conflict with m4 macro name?

[Karel Kulhavy <clock@twibright.com>]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 04:50:02PM +0000, bumpelo@comcast.net wrote:
> Probably the m4 manual. I believe that the "-" was considered a subtract
> operation and the operands weren't good. Of course this depends on how
> gsch2pcb uses m4; I wouldn't think the filename should matter, but I know
> nothing about the internals of gsch2pcb.

This is the usual problem of ASCII polution. Anette uses '/' as special
character, Bob ':', Chris '*', granddaddy '_' and Peter Pan 'p'. Gradually they
take the whole ASCII alphabet.

Another option is to escape them (so that saying " sometimes mean you write
\\\\\\""\\\\\\\"\\\\\\\\"""""""""""\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\""""""" or something like
that).

The correct option is to pass strings as pairs of (length, pointer to memory)
This way you can have arbitrary long (0-very long) string of whatever
(including 0).

Cl<

> 
> 
> > Hello
> > 
> > I named my file symbol SUBD_MALE_LAY-25_tbl and during gsch2pcb I got a
> > message:
> > stdin:110: m4: Bad expression in eval: /2
> > and gsch2pcb hanged.
> > 
> > I tried to rename it to subd_male_25_tbl and now gsch2pcb works fine.
> > 
> > What are the exact rules to prevent such conflicts?
> > 
> > Cl<