3.1.2 The Autoconf Language

The Autoconf language differs from many other computer languages because it treats actual code the same as plain text. Whereas in C, for instance, data and instructions have different syntactic status, in Autoconf their status is rigorously the same. Therefore, we need a means to distinguish literal strings from text to be expanded: quotation.

When calling macros that take arguments, there must not be any white space between the macro name and the open parenthesis.

AC_INIT ([oops], [1.0]) # incorrect
AC_INIT([hello], [1.0]) # good

Arguments should be enclosed within the quote characters ‘[’ and ‘]’, and be separated by commas. Any leading blanks or newlines in arguments are ignored, unless they are quoted. You should always quote an argument that might contain a macro name, comma, parenthesis, or a leading blank or newline. This rule applies recursively for every macro call, including macros called from other macros. For more details on quoting rules, see Programming in M4.

For instance:

AC_CHECK_HEADER([stdio.h],
                [AC_DEFINE([HAVE_STDIO_H], [1],
                   [Define to 1 if you have <stdio.h>.])],
                [AC_MSG_ERROR([sorry, can't do anything for you])])

is quoted properly. You may safely simplify its quotation to:

AC_CHECK_HEADER([stdio.h],
                [AC_DEFINE([HAVE_STDIO_H], 1,
                   [Define to 1 if you have <stdio.h>.])],
                [AC_MSG_ERROR([sorry, can't do anything for you])])

because ‘1’ cannot contain a macro call. Here, the argument of AC_MSG_ERROR must be quoted; otherwise, its comma would be interpreted as an argument separator. Also, the second and third arguments of ‘AC_CHECK_HEADER’ must be quoted, since they contain macro calls. The three arguments ‘HAVE_STDIO_H’, ‘stdio.h’, and ‘Define to 1 if you have <stdio.h>.’ do not need quoting, but if you unwisely defined a macro with a name like ‘Define’ or ‘stdio’ then they would need quoting. Cautious Autoconf users would keep the quotes, but many Autoconf users find such precautions annoying, and would rewrite the example as follows:

AC_CHECK_HEADER(stdio.h,
                [AC_DEFINE(HAVE_STDIO_H, 1,
                   [Define to 1 if you have <stdio.h>.])],
                [AC_MSG_ERROR([sorry, can't do anything for you])])

This is safe, so long as you adopt good naming conventions and do not define macros with names like ‘HAVE_STDIO_H’, ‘stdio’, or ‘h’. Though it is also safe here to omit the quotes around ‘Define to 1 if you have <stdio.h>.’ this is not recommended, as message strings are more likely to inadvertently contain commas.

The following example is wrong and dangerous, as it is underquoted:

AC_CHECK_HEADER(stdio.h,
                AC_DEFINE(HAVE_STDIO_H, 1,
                   Define to 1 if you have <stdio.h>.),
                AC_MSG_ERROR([sorry, can't do anything for you]))

In other cases, you may want to use text that also resembles a macro call. You must quote that text (whether just the potential problem, or the entire line) even when it is not passed as a macro argument; and you may also have to use m4_pattern_allow (see Forbidden Patterns), to declare your intention that the resulting configure file will have a literal that resembles what would otherwise be reserved for a macro name. For example:

dnl Simulate a possible future autoconf macro
m4_define([AC_DC], [oops])
dnl Underquoted:
echo "Hard rock was here!  --AC_DC"
dnl Correctly quoted:
m4_pattern_allow([AC_DC])
echo "Hard rock was here!  --[AC_DC]"
[echo "Hard rock was here!  --AC_DC"]

which results in this text in configure:

echo "Hard rock was here!  --oops"
echo "Hard rock was here!  --AC_DC"
echo "Hard rock was here!  --AC_DC"

When you use the same text in a macro argument, you must therefore have an extra quotation level (since one is stripped away by the macro substitution). In general, then, it is a good idea to use double quoting for all literal string arguments, either around just the problematic portions, or over the entire argument:

m4_pattern_allow([AC_DC])
AC_MSG_WARN([[AC_DC] stinks  --Iron Maiden])
AC_MSG_WARN([[AC_DC stinks  --Iron Maiden]])

It is also possible to avoid the problematic patterns in the first place, by the use of additional escaping (either a quadrigraph, or creative shell constructs), in which case it is no longer necessary to use m4_pattern_allow:

echo "Hard rock was here!  --AC""_DC"
AC_MSG_WARN([[AC@&t@_DC stinks  --Iron Maiden]])

You are now able to understand one of the constructs of Autoconf that has been continually misunderstood... The rule of thumb is that whenever you expect macro expansion, expect quote expansion; i.e., expect one level of quotes to be lost. For instance:

AC_COMPILE_IFELSE(AC_LANG_SOURCE([char b[10];]), [],
 [AC_MSG_ERROR([you lose])])

is incorrect: here, the first argument of AC_LANG_SOURCE is ‘char b[10];’ and is expanded once, which results in ‘char b10;’; and the AC_LANG_SOURCE is also expanded prior to being passed to AC_COMPILE_IFELSE. (There was an idiom common in Autoconf’s past to address this issue via the M4 changequote primitive, but do not use it!) Let’s take a closer look: the author meant the first argument to be understood as a literal, and therefore it must be quoted twice; likewise, the intermediate AC_LANG_SOURCE macro should be quoted once so that it is only expanded after the rest of the body of AC_COMPILE_IFELSE is in place:

AC_COMPILE_IFELSE([AC_LANG_SOURCE([[char b[10];]])], [],
  [AC_MSG_ERROR([you lose])])

Voilà, you actually produce ‘char b[10];’ this time!

On the other hand, descriptions (e.g., the last parameter of AC_DEFINE or AS_HELP_STRING) are not literals—they are subject to line breaking, for example—and should not be double quoted. Even if these descriptions are short and are not actually broken, double quoting them yields weird results.

Some macros take optional arguments, which this documentation represents as [arg] (not to be confused with the quote characters). You may just leave them empty, or use ‘[]’ to make the emptiness of the argument explicit, or you may simply omit the trailing commas. The three lines below are equivalent:

AC_CHECK_HEADERS([stdio.h], [], [], [])
AC_CHECK_HEADERS([stdio.h],,,)
AC_CHECK_HEADERS([stdio.h])

It is best to put each macro call on its own line in configure.ac. Most of the macros don’t add extra newlines; they rely on the newline after the macro call to terminate the commands. This approach makes the generated configure script a little easier to read by not inserting lots of blank lines. It is generally safe to set shell variables on the same line as a macro call, because the shell allows assignments without intervening newlines.

You can include comments in configure.ac files by starting them with the ‘#’. For example, it is helpful to begin configure.ac files with a line like this:

# Process this file with autoconf to produce a configure script.