.TH NAME SECTION 
.\" NAME should be all caps, SECTION should be 1-8, maybe w/ subsection
.\" other parms are allowed: see man(7), man(1)
.SH NAME
chpp \- text preprocessor
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B chpp
.I "[options] [files ...]"
.br
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
This manual page documents briefly the
.BR chpp ,
command.
This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution
(but may be used by others), because the original program does not
have a manual page.
Instead, it has documentation in the GNU Info format; see below.
.PP
.B chpp
is a preprocessor. Therefore, its main purpose is to modify
input text by including other input files and by macro expansion.

Two main features distinguish
.B chpp
from programs like m4 and cpp.  

.B chpp
is non-intrusive. This means that you can take your favourite text and it is very unlikely that it will be changed when piped through `chpp'. Due to this feature it is pretty easy to start using `chpp' since you can just start writing your text and need not concern yourself with `chpp' sitting in the background changing it for no obvious reason.

.B chpp
is not just a package for performing simple macro expansion, but can indeed be considered a full-fledged programming language.  Most importantly, it provides support for complex data structures, namely lists and hashes (associative arrays), which can be nested arbitrarily.

.SH OPTIONS
The programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-').
A summary of options are included below.
For a complete description, see the Info files.

.B chpp
reads and processes all specified files in sequential order, as if they were one file. If no file is specified, `chpp' reads from standard input. Output is written to standard output if not otherwise
specified.
The following is a summary and description of all available `chpp' options:

.TP
.B --version
Prints out the version number of the invoked `chpp'.

.TP
.B --help
Prints out a summary of `chpp' command line syntax.

.TP
.B -o, --output FILENAME
Specifies that output should be written to file FILENAME.

.TP
.B -I, --include-dir DIR
Adds DIR to the list of standard include directories.

.TP
.B -D NAME=VALUE
Defines the `chpp' variable NAME with the value VALUE.

.TP
.B -M, --generate-dependencies
Generates a dependency list suitable for `make' like `cpp'.

.TP
.B --version
Show version of program.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
The programs are documented fully in the GNU Info system.
.SH AUTHOR
This manual page was written by  <gecko@debian.org>,
for the Debian GNU/Linux system.