While in emacs I called up the m4 info file, and read up to section
"1.4 Using this manual".
There I saw:
<begin snip>
As each of the predefined macros in 'm4' is described, a prototype
call of the macro will be shown, giving descriptive names to the
arguments, e.g.,
-- Composite: example (STRING, [COUNT = '1']
[ARGUMENT]This is a sample prototype. There is not really a macro
named 'example', but this documents that if there were, it would be
<end snip>
What is "[ARGUMENT]"? I assumed it was the start of that text.
But the explanation later says:
<begin snip>
intended to call the macro without any arguments. The brackets
around COUNT and ARGUMENT show that these arguments are optional.
<end snip>
So perhaps "[ARGUMENT]" is intended to be a dummy parameter in the example.
Perhaps this section is formatted incorrectly.
Emacs is:
GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.7) of 2014-03-07 on toyol, modified by Debian
m4 manual is:
manual (22 September 2013) for GNU M4 (version 1.4.17)
This Lenovo N500 laptop is running Linux Mint 17.1 .
Thanks very much.