Dear Aditya, Wolfgang,
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:11:55 -0700, Wolfgang Schuster
When you use \gobbleoneargument you can omit the output in the log. : To avoid this I added \removeunwantedspaces to my \hide command.
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:28:24 -0700, Aditya Mahajan
Untested, but I am pretty sure
\message{\iffalse}
will fail. Basically, everything inside \message (or the \hide macro by Wolfgang) needs to be processed by TeX, so strictly speaking it is not equivalent to a comment.
See the TeX FAQ http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=conditional for more details.
The most robust solution is to use buffers, but that will not work if the buffer is part of a macro argument.
The luatex solution (which is again not perfect) that I posted removes everything inside the comment before it is seeen by TeX.
Thank you both for your insightful answers. I appreciate it! Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shīʿī Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523