Preserve leading whitespace in verbatim environment

Question

The following code (as a small example):

\begin{verbatim}                                                                
         #####                                                              
       #########                                                            
     #############                                                       
\end{verbatim}

gets rendered like this:

    #####
  #########
#############

What's happening is that the verbatim block is scanned and the leading whitespace block is removed, or normalized somehow. How can I stop this from occurring?

I would guess that the leading space are tabs not spaces, easiest is to fix your source to use spaces, or if not the verbatim and other packages have some support for tabs. — David Carlisle, Jul 01 '16 at 07:46
Ah, you're right, they are tabs (at least partially). Maybe I could set a tab length defined in spaces? — Charles, Jul 01 '16 at 07:48
@Charles as I say, you can in the verbatim package extended version of verbatim, not in the one built in to latex, or most editors should easily allow you to replace tabs by the right number of spaces, so the standard verbatim works. — David Carlisle, Jul 01 '16 at 07:53

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 01 '16 at 10:33

You can use fancyvrb that respects TAB characters by default and allows to set the number of spaces they mean at runtime.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{showframe} % just for the example
\usepackage{fancyvrb}

\begin{document}

First attempt
\begin{verbatim}
        #####
      #########
    #############
\end{verbatim}

Second attempt:
\begin{Verbatim}
        #####
      #########
    #############
\end{Verbatim}

Third attempt:
\begin{Verbatim}[tabsize=4]
        #####
      #########
    #############
\end{Verbatim}

\end{document}

Note: each line in the three verbatim environments starts with a TAB, in my test file (TABs are normalized to four spaces by the site).

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 01 '16 at 07:50

2

I'm afraid your assertion that the whitespace to the left of the hash symbols is "removed, or normalized somehow" in a verbatim environment is incorrect, as the following example shows. (The framelines in the screenshot serve to denote the edges of the text block.)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{showframe}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{verbatim}                                                                
         #####                                                              
       #########                                                            
     #############                                                       
#######################
\end{verbatim}
\end{document}

answered Jul 01 '16 at 07:50

Mico

506,678

try that with tabs not spaces:-) – David Carlisle Jul 01 '16 at 07:52
1

@DavidCarlisle - The SE site software seems to replace tabs with spaces automatically. :-) Maybe that's why I can't reproduce the OP's issue... – Mico Jul 01 '16 at 07:53
Correct! I didn't notice that the spaces were actually tabs when copying from the terminal. I am actually generating the LaTeX with org-mode in emacs and I think I still haven't sorted out the generation correctly. – Charles Jul 01 '16 at 07:54
5

@Charles yo emacs! the editor of choice, just use M-x untabify on your source file! – David Carlisle Jul 01 '16 at 07:55
Thanks, that does work. I also posted a solution in LaTeX. – Charles Jul 01 '16 at 08:11

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 01 '16 at 08:10

Turns out the moreverb package is just for this kind of situation:

\usepackage{moreverb}
...

\begin{verbatimtab}
...
\end{verbatimtab}

From the documentation:

\begin{verbatimtab}[⟨tab width⟩] reproduces its body verbatim, 
with the tabs expanded to the given width (the default value is 8).

Preserve leading whitespace in verbatim environment

3 Answers3