11

I'm inserting graphics from data in a csv-file and due to lazy input I have to get rid of leading and trailing spaces. It works fine with the trimspaces package. 

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{expl3,graphicx}
\usepackage{trimspaces}
\begin{document}

\def\testA{example-image-a }
%\includegraphics{\testA} %error

\def\testB{ example-image-a}
%\includegraphics{\testB} %error

\makeatletter
\trim@spaces@in\testA
\includegraphics{\testA}

\trim@spaces@in\testB
\includegraphics{\testB}


\end{document}

By curiosity I tried to get this with expl3 and \tl_trim_spaces:n but didn't find a sensible way to store the content of the commands without the spaces in a command. Does someone know how to do it?

kiss my armpit
  • 36,086
Ulrike Fischer
  • 327,261

1 Answers1

11

Two ways. With the first method you use \trimspaces in front of the macro; with the second you can ‘normalize’ a macro to have leading and trailing spaces removed.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse,graphicx}

\ExplSyntaxOn
\DeclareExpandableDocumentCommand{\trimspaces}{m}
 {
  \tl_trim_spaces:V #1
 }
\cs_generate_variant:Nn \tl_trim_spaces:n { V }

\NewDocumentCommand{\normalize}{m}
 {
  \tl_trim_spaces:N #1
 }
\ExplSyntaxOff

\begin{document}

\def\testA{example-image-a }
\def\testB{ example-image-a}

\includegraphics[width=4cm]{\trimspaces\testA}

\includegraphics[width=4cm]{\trimspaces\testB}

\normalize{\testA}\normalize{\testB}

\includegraphics[width=4cm]{\testA}

\includegraphics[width=4cm]{\testB}

\end{document}

enter image description here

egreg
  • 1,121,712
  • Ah I see. I hadn't understand that \tl_trim_spaces:N does the same as \trim@spaces@in, I thought it would leave things in the input stream like \tl_trim_spaces:n. And I hadn't thought about V type, I only tried x. – Ulrike Fischer Dec 19 '13 at 10:53
  • @UlrikeFischer The description of \tl_trim_spaces:N could be clearer. – egreg Dec 19 '13 at 10:56
  • I can look to improve the docs for a release likely next week: @UlrikeFischer was there something specific that was missing? – Joseph Wright Dec 19 '13 at 11:23
  • 1
    @JosephWright Maybe “Resets ⟨tl var⟩ by removing any leading and trailing explicit space characters (explicit tokens with character code 32 and category code 10) from its content.” – egreg Dec 19 '13 at 11:26
  • @JosephWright: The main source of confusion was in my case the naming of the commands: Both \tl_trim_spaces:n and \tl_trim_spaces:N share the same command "body" \tl_trim_spaces and so I assumed that they are variants and do more or less the same only on different types of arguments and I transfered "leaves the result in the input stream" from the description of \tl_trim_spaces:n to the other command. – Ulrike Fischer Dec 19 '13 at 15:30