(m4.info.gz) Maketemp
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12.5 Making temporary files
===========================
Commands specified to `syscmd' or `esyscmd' might need a temporary
file, for output or for some other purpose. There is a builtin macro,
`maketemp', for making temporary file names:
-- Builtin: maketemp (TEMPLATE)
Expands to a name of a new, empty file, made from the string
TEMPLATE, which should end with the string `XXXXXX'. The six `X'
characters are then replaced with random data, in order to make
the file name unique.
The macro `maketemp' is recognized only with parameters.
maketemp(`/tmp/fooXXXXXX')
=>/tmp/fooa07346
Traditional implementations of `m4' replaced the trailing `X'
sequence with the process id, without creating the file; meaning you
only get one result no matter how many times you use maketemp on the
same string. As of this release, POSIX is considering the addition of
a new macro `mkstemp' that behaves like GNU `maketemp', so a future
version of GNU M4 may have changes in this area.
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