| Just like functions in a C program, it's important to choose a good name for your Autoconf macros. A well- chosen name helps to unambiguously describe the purpose of the macro. Macros in M4 are all named within a single namespace and, thus, it is necessary to follow a convention to ensure that names retain uniqueness. This reasoning goes beyond just avoiding collisions with other macros--if you happen to choose a name that is already known to M4 as a definition of any kind, your macro's name could be rewritten by the prior definition during macro processing. One naming convention has emerged--prefixing each macro name with the name of the package that the macro originated in or the initials of the macro's author. Macros are usually named in a hierarchical fashion, with each part of the name separated by underscores. As you move left-to-right through each component of the name, the description becomes more detailed. There are some high-level categories of macros suggested by the Autoconf manual that you may wish to use when forming a descriptive name for your own macro. For example, if your macro tries to discover the existence of a particular C structure, you might wish to use
Some examples of macro names formed in this way include:
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