Tim Steenvoorden

10. Februar 2018 um 12:44

Thanks Otared! Works like a charm!

Out of curiosity, could you explain the mechanics behind this? I know it is a commonly used trick in TeX macro definitions, but I don’t know how it changes TeX’s understanding of the tokes it parses.

When you create a new commands like this

\def\mycommand[#1]{...}

the brackets are delimiters for the argument of the command, i.e. when TeX sees
\mycommand it looks for [ and grabs everything intill ] as as argument. When you
out now a space (or start a new line) after ] in your definition of the command, e.g.

\def\mycommand[#1] {...}

TeX looks now for “] ” (right bracket followed by a space) as delimiter for
the argument of your command.

Wolfgang