“A macro processor scans input text for defined symbols–the
macros–and replaces that text by other text, or possibly by other
symbols. For instance, a macro processor can convert one language
into another.“If you’re a C programmer, you know cpp, the C preprocessor, a
simple macro processor. m4 is a powerful macro processor that’s
been part of Unix for some 30 years, but it’s almost
unknown–except for special purposes, such as generating the
sendmail.cf file. It’s worth knowing because you can do things with
m4 that are hard to do any other way.
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