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From: toriver@lise.unit.no (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: \makeatletter  \makeatother    what do they do?
Message-ID: <TORIVER.91Jun19155926@lise1.lise.unit.no>
Date: 19 Jun 91 13:59:26 GMT
References: <tas.677284397@tasman>
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Organization: Institute Of Computer Sciences, NTH
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In-Reply-To: tas@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au's message of 18 Jun 91 22:33:17 GMT

In article <tas.677284397@tasman> tas@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Tas van.Ommen) writes:

   Maybe this is a novice question but I can't find these control sequences
   in either Knuth or Lamport.  What do the commands \makeatletter and      
   \makeatother do?

   Tas van Ommen                  email:  tas@physvax.phys.utas.edu.au

* I think they are macros defined as such:

\def\makeatother{\catcode'\@=12}   	% @ becomes an 'other' type
					%character
\def\makeatletter{\catcode'\@=11}	% @ becomes a letter, can then
					% be used in macro names 

The reason to do this is to have "hidden" names, plain TeX uses this a
lot (source: Schwartz: Introduction to TeX, p. 190)
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