Meh. Most of these classic unix tools aren't particularly good examples of what they do, they're just old enough to have become established. I believe M4 was originally created to simplify the sendmail config file and then eventually pulled out into its own program?
Rather like this writer, I felt the need to make my blog entries markdown with minimum header and footer surrounding them. So I found a one-liner script that renders markdown in the browser. (Anyone using lynx gets the raw markdown instead, but that's probably no less friendly than what lynx could come up with, and also means that you can read it just as well with telnet (or I guess openssl s_client these days) if you don't have a browser around.
Getting flashbacks to the earliest Unix/C book I had (from 1977 with 2nd ed from 1983 or so) already mentioning ratfor and m4. Never occurred to me that these two are related.
Agreed. A ton of people argue for them, but when you ask people to re-design them starting from scratch today, few people arrive to the design of the Bourne shell, for example.
Rather like this writer, I felt the need to make my blog entries markdown with minimum header and footer surrounding them. So I found a one-liner script that renders markdown in the browser. (Anyone using lynx gets the raw markdown instead, but that's probably no less friendly than what lynx could come up with, and also means that you can read it just as well with telnet (or I guess openssl s_client these days) if you don't have a browser around.