>Number:         485
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       m4 bug
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    gnats-admin (Utility Bug People)
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Sep 18 10:35:02 1994
>Originator:     Jarle Greipsland
>Organization:
Free Hardware Foundation, UnLtd.
>Release:        1.0_BETA
>Environment:
	
System: NetBSD honey.idt.unit.no 1.0_BETA NetBSD 1.0_BETA (HONEY) #0: Sat Sep 10 01:46:25 MET DST 1994 jarle@honey.idt.unit.no:/local/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/HONEY i386
Phase of the moon: The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (99% of Full)

>Description:
According to the manual page, the m4 command 'changecom' shall accept multi
character strings as comment delimiters (max 5 chars).  This doesn't work,
because of the comment delimiter type being a single char.  Also, if the
input file ends within a comment, m4 will spew 'EOF-chars' until stopped by
some external cause.
	
>How-To-Repeat:
Run m4 with a input file containing the following line:
changecom(`/*',`*/')/
	
>Fix:
Alternative 1: Fix the manual page (i.e. allow only one char for comment
delimiters).  This alternative make us a bit 'incompatible'.....
Alternative 2: Change the scommt/ecommt datatype to char *, and modify 
the loop in main.c to take this into account.  Also handle EOF within 
comments....
	
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:

m4 doesn't handle multicharacter comment delimiters at all