(m4.info)Patsubst

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11.6 Substituting text by regular expression
============================================

Global substitution in a string is done by 'patsubst':

 -- Builtin: patsubst (STRING, REGEXP, [REPLACEMENT])
     Searches STRING for matches of REGEXP, and substitutes REPLACEMENT
     for each match.  The syntax for regular expressions is the same as
     in GNU Emacs (Note: Regexp).

     The parts of STRING that are not covered by any match of REGEXP are
     copied to the expansion.  Whenever a match is found, the search
     proceeds from the end of the match, so a character from STRING will
     never be substituted twice.  If REGEXP matches a string of zero
     length, the start position for the search is incremented, to avoid
     infinite loops.

     When a replacement is to be made, REPLACEMENT is inserted into the
     expansion, with '\N' substituted by the text matched by the Nth
     parenthesized sub-expression of PATSUBST, for up to nine
     sub-expressions.  The escape '\&' is replaced by the text of the
     entire regular expression matched.  For all other characters, '\'
     treats the next character literally.  A warning is issued if there
     were fewer sub-expressions than the '\N' requested, or if there is
     a trailing '\'.

     The REPLACEMENT argument can be omitted, in which case the text
     matched by REGEXP is deleted.

     The macro 'patsubst' is recognized only with parameters.

     patsubst(`GNUs not Unix', `^', `OBS: ')
     =>OBS: GNUs not Unix
     patsubst(`GNUs not Unix', `\<', `OBS: ')
     =>OBS: GNUs OBS: not OBS: Unix
     patsubst(`GNUs not Unix', `\w*', `(\&)')
     =>(GNUs)() (not)() (Unix)()
     patsubst(`GNUs not Unix', `\w+', `(\&)')
     =>(GNUs) (not) (Unix)
     patsubst(`GNUs not Unix', `[A-Z][a-z]+')
     =>GN not 
     patsubst(`GNUs not Unix', `not', `NOT\')
     error->m4:stdin:6: Warning: trailing \ ignored in replacement
     =>GNUs NOT Unix

   Here is a slightly more realistic example, which capitalizes
individual words or whole sentences, by substituting calls of the macros
'upcase' and 'downcase' into the strings.

 -- Composite: upcase (TEXT)
 -- Composite: downcase (TEXT)
 -- Composite: capitalize (TEXT)
     Expand to TEXT, but with capitalization changed: 'upcase' changes
     all letters to upper case, 'downcase' changes all letters to lower
     case, and 'capitalize' changes the first character of each word to
     upper case and the remaining characters to lower case.

   First, an example of their usage, using implementations distributed
in 'm4-1.4.18/examples/capitalize.m4'.

     $ m4 -I examples
     include(`capitalize.m4')
     =>
     upcase(`GNUs not Unix')
     =>GNUS NOT UNIX
     downcase(`GNUs not Unix')
     =>gnus not unix
     capitalize(`GNUs not Unix')
     =>Gnus Not Unix

   Now for the implementation.  There is a helper macro '_capitalize'
which puts only its first word in mixed case.  Then 'capitalize' merely
parses out the words, and replaces them with an invocation of
'_capitalize'.  (As presented here, the 'capitalize' macro has some
subtle flaws.  You should try to see if you can find and correct them;
or Note: Answers.).

     $ m4 -I examples
     undivert(`capitalize.m4')dnl
     =>divert(`-1')
     =># upcase(text)
     =># downcase(text)
     =># capitalize(text)
     =>#   change case of text, simple version
     =>define(`upcase', `translit(`$*', `a-z', `A-Z')')
     =>define(`downcase', `translit(`$*', `A-Z', `a-z')')
     =>define(`_capitalize',
     =>       `regexp(`$1', `^\(\w\)\(\w*\)',
     =>               `upcase(`\1')`'downcase(`\2')')')
     =>define(`capitalize', `patsubst(`$1', `\w+', `_$0(`\&')')')
     =>divert`'dnl

   While 'regexp' replaces the whole input with the replacement as soon
as there is a match, 'patsubst' replaces each _occurrence_ of a match
and preserves non-matching pieces:

     define(`patreg',
     `patsubst($@)
     regexp($@)')dnl
     patreg(`bar foo baz Foo', `foo\|Foo', `FOO')
     =>bar FOO baz FOO
     =>FOO
     patreg(`aba abb 121', `\(.\)\(.\)\1', `\2\1\2')
     =>bab abb 212
     =>bab

   Omitting REGEXP evokes a warning, but still produces output; contrast
this with an empty REGEXP argument.

     patsubst(`abc')
     error->m4:stdin:1: Warning: too few arguments to builtin `patsubst'
     =>abc
     patsubst(`abc', `')
     =>abc
     patsubst(`abc', `', `\\-')
     =>\-a\-b\-c\-