7

In Expandable full expansion of tokens that preserves catcodes, Joseph Wright presents the following code:

\long\def\fullyexpand#1{%
  \csname donothing\fullyexpandauxi{#1}{}%
}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxi#1{%
  \expandafter\fullyexpandauxii\romannumeral -`0#1\fullyexpandend
}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxii#1#2\fullyexpandend#3{%
  \ifx\donothing#2\donothing
    \expandafter\fullyexpandend
  \else
    \expandafter\fullyexpandloop
  \fi
  {#1}{#2}{#3}%
}
\long\def\fullyexpandend#1#2#3{\endcsname#3#1}
\long\def\fullyexpandloop#1#2#3{%
  \fullyexpandauxi{#2}{#3#1}%
}
\def\donothing{}

Of which he says:

I'd also note that the above code needs some guards adding for a blank (empty or all space) argument, as currently things fail in these cases.

And this is true enough, if not exactly grammatical. Unfortunately, I'm not up to scratch on my TeX, so I'm not sure how to add such guards. Any takers?

(For my application, anything that will work in pdfTeX is fine.)

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SamB
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1 Answers1

8

This version needs exactly two expansions to work, and avoids needing the \csname construction by using two \romannumeral applications instead. The outer one makes sure we need exactly two expansions, the inner one does the expanding:

\long\def\fullyexpand#1{%
  \romannumeral-`0%
    \fullyexpandauxi{#1}{}%
}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxi#1{%
  % The space in the following line is deliberate: it will always finish the
  % \romannumeral before \fullyexpandauxii expands
  \expandafter\fullyexpandauxii\romannumeral-`0#1 \fullyexpandend
}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxii#1{%
  \ifx\fullyexpandend#1%
    \expandafter\fullyexpandend
  \else
    \expandafter\fullyexpandauxiii
  \fi
    {#1}%
}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxiii#1#2\fullyexpandend#3{%
  \expandafter\fullyexpandauxii\romannumeral-`0#2 \fullyexpandend{#3#1}%
}
% Here, #1 will be "\fullyexpandend", as we have reached the end of the loop
\long\def\fullyexpandend#1#2{ #2}

The previous version coded in a test for an entirely blank argument, but this fails if the argument is not blank but expands to something which is:

\long\def\fullyexpand#1{%
  \romannumeral-`0%
    \expandafter\ifx\expandafter\relax\detokenize\expandafter
      {\gobble#1 ?}\relax
      \expandafter\fullyexpandblank
    \else
      \expandafter\fullyexpandauxi
    \fi
      {#1}{}%
}
\long\def\gobble#1{}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxi#1{%
  \expandafter\fullyexpandauxii\romannumeral -`0#1\fullyexpandend
}
\long\def\fullyexpandauxii#1#2\fullyexpandend#3{%
  \expandafter\ifx\expandafter\relax\detokenize{#2}\relax
    \expandafter\fullyexpandend
  \else
    \expandafter\fullyexpandloop
  \fi
  {#1}{#2}{#3}%
}
\long\def\fullyexpandend#1#2#3{ #3#1}
\long\def\fullyexpandloop#1#2#3{%
  \fullyexpandauxi{#2}{#3#1}%
}
\long\def\fullyexpandblank#1#2{ }
Joseph Wright
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  • isn't this missing a definition of something like \def\fullyexpandblank#1#2{ } otherwise I get an undefined command error if there are any spaces in the original arg, I was trying to see if spaces can be preserved (rather than stripped) but that seems a little tricky to do via expansion only as the primitive argument grabber has a tendency to eat space – David Carlisle Mar 09 '12 at 20:32
  • @DavidCarlisle Yes, I'd forgotten to copy-paste that line. – Joseph Wright Mar 09 '12 at 20:48
  • Huh. Now I discover that this doesn't seem to work for stuff like, say, \fullyexpand{\gobble{1}}, due to the way it loops over the input one token at a time, so you end up with \gobble and 1 instead of nothing :-(. – SamB Mar 11 '12 at 01:42
  • ... but, since it is what I literally asked for, and it turned out that all I really needed was an \edef, I'm accepting it ;-). – SamB Mar 11 '12 at 17:25