Trying to get the spacing right after an expanded sequence

Asked Apr 04 '15 at 15:44

Active Apr 04 '15 at 15:56

Viewed 23 times

I've defined

\newcommand{\foo}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
\newcommand{\bar}{\foo{Bar}}

Now, when I compile

\bar tender --- tend your \bar.

I would like to get

Bar tender - tend your Bar.

but what I actually get is

Bartender - tend your Bar.

It seems that if I use \foo{Bar} directly, I get what I want.

How can I get the output I expect by changing the command rather than the invocation? I'd rather not use \xspace unless absolutely necessary.

edited Apr 04 '15 at 15:56

asked Apr 04 '15 at 15:44

einpoklum

1

\bar{} tender -- tend your \bar. – egreg Apr 04 '15 at 15:44
@egreg: I'd sort of like the command itself to take care of that and for me not to need the empty group... – einpoklum Apr 04 '15 at 15:48
@einpoklum All (la)TeX command are like this so why this will be different? – touhami Apr 04 '15 at 15:52
@touhami: You could say I want the effect of textual replacement in this case rather than command expansion. – einpoklum Apr 04 '15 at 15:56
Then use xspace. Or check the code of xspace and do something similar in your command. Commands with names consisting of letters do swallow spaces. – Ulrike Fischer Apr 04 '15 at 16:03
@einpoklum Command expansion is exactly the same as textual replacement. – egreg Apr 04 '15 at 16:06
The space is not there, it is absorbed while recognising the command name, so if you want to put a space back you need to add a space, either always or using xspace or whatever. – David Carlisle Apr 04 '15 at 16:07
@einpoklum see egreg comment http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/86565/drawbacks-of-xspace – touhami Apr 04 '15 at 16:10
You can also do something like \def\bar!{\textbf{foo}}\bar! blabla. – Ulrike Fischer Apr 04 '15 at 16:30

0 Answers0