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From: jeff@zem.uchicago.edu (Jeff Adler)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Want to extract words from a string
Message-ID: <1991Jan30.214041.11089@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 91 21:40:41 GMT
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: Department of Mathematics, University of Chicago
Lines: 22


Suppose I have a string consisting of words separated by blanks.
I would like a macro which returns the last word of the string,
and another macro which returns everything else.

Example:
	\lastword{one two three four}  yields		four
	\butlastword{one two three four} yields		one two three

Also, if it isn't too complicated, it would be nice if these
macros ignored blanks inside nested braces.

Example:
	\lastword{one two three four\footnote{five six}}
		yields		four\footnote{five six}

I'd appreciate any help anyone out there can give.
Please respond by e-mail, and I'll summarize.
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Jeff Adler				jeff@zaphod.uchicago.edu
Math Department				jeff%zaphod@midway.uchicago.edu
University of Chicago			jda3@midway.uchicago.edu