[696] in SIPB bug reports
Is This a Bug?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Oct 15 20:42:20 1989
From: amgreene@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 89 20:43:41 -0400
To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bjaspan@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Theodore Ts'o's message of Sun, 15 Oct 89 20:30:29 -0400 <8910160030.AA02918@BINKLEY.MIT.EDU>
Ted: good explanation. TeX doesn't know comma fromany other symbol
with which you might start a word.
The reason \acl/ works is the following: TeX stops reading a csname
at the first non-alphabetic character (in this case, the slash). Now,
when you define a macro, you can define its arguments the usual way,
\def\foo#1#2{This has two args}
or you can require that they be delimited with special chars. Why do
this? Readability: Wouldn't you rather type
\print this or that now
rather than
\print{this}{that}
So you can do \def\print #1 or #2 now{This has two delimited args}
and correct magic happens.
In the case of \def\acl/, what you are doig is requiring that a slash
follow \acl. If you def it this way and try using \acl without the
slash, you'll get an error (use of \acl doesn't match its definition).
I agree that this is brain-damaged and rush to mention that MITeX, which
I will "announce" tomorrow, doesn't do this. Whitespace following a
command is preserved.
Unless people object, I think this can move off the list now. (The only
reason I relied to the list was in case other people were wondering why
\acl/ works.)
- Rhu
