newcommand for verbatim

Question

I'm trying to write a \newcommand for verbatim:

\newcommand{\codeline}[1]{\begin{verbatim}{#1}\end{verbatim}}

and use it as

\codeline{int foo;}

but it gives an error "File ended while scanning use of \@xverbatim". How to fix it?

You would have to use other means to include verbatim content inside a macro. See Verbatim inside a command. You may be interested in what the listings package has to offer instead. It also provides the means to create your own environments. For example, see Creating a custom environment. — Werner, Dec 08 '12 at 06:18
@Werner Thanks for your reply. Why can't I include verbatim inside a macro the way I did it? — Paul S., Dec 08 '12 at 06:26
An environment should be used for verbatim text. Take a loot at the fancyvrb package; it provides the \DefineVerbatimEnvironment for defining your own verbatim environment. There is also \DefineShortVerb for creating short verbatim texts like this |int foo;|. — Stephan Lehmke, Dec 08 '12 at 06:26
If you don't want to use TeX stuff like \ or % in code lines, maybe \newcommand{\codeline}[1]{\par{\ttfamily#1\par}} is enough? — Stephan Lehmke, Dec 08 '12 at 06:36
For solutions that actually use the environment, see https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/543921/how-can-one-construct-a-macro-that-contains-a-pythontex-or-fancyvrb-environment (mostly use \scantokens to re-parse the tokens, is complex, but is general) — user202729, Nov 16 '21 at 06:35

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 08 '12 at 11:44

8

If you want a simple implementation, go with

\newcommand[1]{{\small\texttt{#1}}}

If you want more detailed control, you should go with fancyvrb or minted packages.

answered Dec 08 '12 at 11:44

recluze

4,201

Oh, btw, I like to put a \small in there because the default monospace font is a little too big for my taste. I like my code snippets relatively equal to or smaller than my main font. – recluze Dec 08 '12 at 11:45
3

This "dirty" command does not work for special caracters as _, &, etc. I.e. \codeline{a_b_c} will result in an error. – strpeter Jan 04 '14 at 16:20
2

@strpeter I use the underscore package by default in my docs and your example works perfectly with that. – recluze Jan 05 '14 at 13:04

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '14 at 16:40

3

Specific answer

For my example below the following code from the listings package was the solution:

\newcommand{\codeline}[1]{\lstinline|#1|}

Of course this is only reasonable if you are using short inline code examples without vertical line |.

Example

MWE in which this implementation makes sense:

\documentclass[landscape]{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\newcommand{\includegraphicswithtitle}[1]{%
\clearpage%
\section*{\lstinline|#1|}%
\includegraphics{#1}}

\title{All graphics of my thesis}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\centering
\includegraphicswithtitle{Image08_a_1.pdf}
\includegraphicswithtitle{Image08_b_1.pdf}
\includegraphicswithtitle{Image08_c_1.pdf}
\end{document}

answered Jan 04 '14 at 16:40

strpeter

5,215

3

What's the advantage of \codeline{text} over \lstinline|text|? – egreg Jan 04 '14 at 16:47
1

@egreg: You can crop several lines together in order to reduce repeating code. Is this not advantage enough? If there is a more efficient answer, please feel free to correct me. – strpeter Jan 04 '14 at 17:06
Also note that in this case #1 will be tokenized first (then detokenized), so \abc\def may become \abc \def, and you can't include % or ignored characters or multiple consecutive spaces. – user202729 Nov 16 '21 at 06:28
Correction, it's possible to include special characters in \lstinline (but it needs to be appropriately escaped), read its documentation for more details. – user202729 Mar 30 '22 at 14:41

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 05 '17 at 22:58

2

Use the following:

\newcommand{\codeline}[1]{\texttt{\detokenize{#1}}}

This will print #1 vermbatim.

answered Dec 05 '17 at 22:58

Alkis

101

From Underscores in words (text) – Werner Dec 05 '17 at 23:48
No, from http://latex.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5539&p=21403&hilit=%5Cdetokenize&sid=ca9c653e363c550caf396b46bc68e564#p21403 – Alkis Dec 06 '17 at 10:51
note that in this case #1 will be tokenized first (then detokenized), so \abc\def may become \abc \def, and you can't include % or ignored characters or multiple consecutive spaces. – user202729 Mar 30 '22 at 14:41

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 12 '14 at 05:07

I met the same problem when I tried to include the output of the Unix cal command inside a LaTeX macro. Enclosing the cal output within the verbatim environment does not work for reasons cited above.

My solution is a hack.

Create a LaTeX document (calendar-out.tex) containing only the output of cal and inside a verbatim environment.
Convert calendar-out.tex to png via the commands $ latex calendar-out.tex and $ dvipng -T tight calendar-out.
Incorporate calendar-out.png into original LaTeX document via the graphicx package.

I hope this helps.

user202729 · Answer 5 · 2022-03-30T14:54:14.363

Using Ulrich Diez's \DefineVerbatimToScantokens macro from the answer https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/629173/250119 (note. go to that answer to read on how to use that macro & maybe upvote if you find the answer useful. _{Unfortunately as far as I know it's not in any package at the moment so you have to copy paste the code}), we can do the following:

\documentclass{article}
%=== Code of \DefineVerbatimToScantokens ========================
% ... <copy the code from that answer>
%=== End of code of \DefineVerbatimToScantokens =================
\DefineVerbatimToScantokens\codeline{v}{%
\begin{verbatim}
#1
\end{verbatim}
}%
\begin{document}
\codeline{int foo;}
\codeline{xy%#?!z}
\end{document}

Also read documentation of xparse.pdf to see what does it mean to specify v here and that it allows % etc. _{except literal TAB} to be included in the argument.

Also note that performance of this solution might be worse than \texttt solution because of the need to rescan the tokens each time it's called. — user202729, Mar 30 '22 at 14:48

newcommand for verbatim

5 Answers5

Specific answer

Example

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