lobsters score: 1 · tags: openbsd, unix
M4 is awful and needs to be buried. Macros are useful as a concept, but M4’s take has no redeeming qualities. Whatever DIY thing you invent in 5 minutes is likely to be more intuitive and less fragile.
Unix has so much crappy stuff that got in 40 years ago on a whim, and we just keep rolling with it because it’s already there. The ossified base also makes getting updated tools and libraries cumbersome, perpetuating the problem.
score 1 · canonical
Yeah, I was full-on agreeing with the article until the escaping mechanism, which pushed it over onto the “I think this is dumb” side again. Now it breaks if someone uses two tildes, which seems very brittle to me.
score 1 · canonical
The author has misunderstood how the quoting works, if you replace all
define(X, Y)withdefine(`X', `Y'), you can use plain,just fine.
score 1 · canonical