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From: duty@murdu.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Duty Programmer)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Macro argument problem: ^^M^^M != \par
Message-ID: <1887@murdu.oz>
Date: 18 Jul 90 05:57:51 GMT
Sender: duty@murdu.oz
Organization: Computing Services, Melb. Uni.
Lines: 33

I have a macro for typesetting references, which has two arguments: the
volume number and page number. Originally, I had the macro defined as

\def\mac #1 #2\par{#1, #2.\par}

and used as:

\mac 10 102

\mac 30 867

and so on. This was fine, except that the second argument was always
followed by a <space> before the trailing period. On reading the
TeXbook carefully, I realised that in fact two returns are NOT the same
as \par: they are translated to <space>\par by TeX. OK fine, so I get
rid of the \par in the definition (making the second parameter
undelimited, so that TeX throws away the <space> for me), only now the
second argument is set to the first digit of the second number!

Now I realise that there are simple ways around this (such as putting
\par at the end of each line, or grouping the second argument in
braces, or even redefining ^^M (yuk!)), but is there a simple way to do this
by modifying the macro definition ONLY?

I'm sure this is a trivial problem, but I cannot immediately see the answer!

Richard

--
Richard Brown                     | E-mail: pbrown@munda.ph.unimelb.EDU.AU
School of Physics                 | Phone : +61 3 344 5081
University of Melbourne           | Fax   : +61 3 344 5104
Parkville Victoria AUSTRALIA 3052 | Telex : AA35185