Re: [Groff] Question on string registers and requests

[Clarke Echols]

Doesn't work that way.

If you use:

.de U
.\" troff/groff requests and other stuff here
..

to define macro U, then use

.ds U \\s-1UNIX\\s0

to define a string named U, the namespace conflict causes macro U
to be overwritten by the defined string.

Executing

.U

does nothing because macro U was never defined by a .de statement.
You can interpolate the string using \*U, but that is the only way
to get the string contents back from the definition.

andlabs wrote:
> Hello. I noticed, that given
>
> .ds U \\s-2UNIX\\s0
>
> in a troff file after -ms, and neither -ms nor that file define a macro .U,
> I could do
>
> .U
>
> and it would be replaced with the contents of that string. Is that a feature
> of groff? I'd like to clear things up. Thanks.