Potential bug with my --synclines

Hi,

I am running into an issue with m4 synclines. I have a list of m4 files which point to child m4 files. This reaches a hierarchy level of 12. When I write out a list of these m4 files and one at a time read them with m4 synclines I am able to read them without an issue. When I put this into a recursive loop at some point m4 synclines stops returning any value. The return code does show that an error is occurring, but I cannot determine what the issue is. I have tried the different -debug options, and have had no luck.

In the recursive function I am getting a list of all included m4 files at the current level, writing them to a file, and then closing that file. Once the file is closed, I recursively call the function on the new list of m4 files.  I am using perl `m4 -synclines $infile > $output`.

The version of m4 I am using is 1.4.13. I am running on RHEL6.

Is this a known issue?

Thanks,
Laura