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Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus
From: |
Russ Allbery |
Subject: |
Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus |
Date: |
Fri, 23 Dec 2022 14:42:42 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.1 (gnu/linux) |
"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> writes:
> For the (neutral) double quote, you have recourse to an obscure
> syntactical feature of AT&T 'troff'. Because a double quote can begin a
> macro argument, the formatter keeps track of whether the current
> argument was started thus, and doesn't require a space after the double
> quote that ends it.(2) (*note Calling Macros-Footnote-2::) In the
> argument list to a macro, a double quote that _isn't_ preceded by a
> space _doesn't_ start a macro argument. If not preceded by a double
> quote that began an argument, this double quote becomes part of the
> argument. Futhermore, within a quoted argument, a pair of adjacent
> double quotes becomes a literal double quote.
Incidentally, the rules for the second argument to .ds appear to not
follow the normal rules for macro arguments.
.ds C` ""
defines \*(C` to a single double-quote, but:
.ds C` """"
defines \*(C` to """, not to " as one might expect if that were
interpreted as a quoted argument and then adjacent doublequotes become a
literal double quote.
So far as I can tell, the correct rule for escaping the second argument to
.ds is that you should double any *leading* double quote, but leave all
the other double quotes alone.
.ds C` "
appears to define \*(C` to the empty string. (I'm not sure where this all
might be documented.)
--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
- man(7), hyphen, and minus (was: [tz] Doubts about a typo fix), G. Branden Robinson, 2022/12/13
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Russ Allbery, 2022/12/13
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, G. Branden Robinson, 2022/12/13
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Russ Allbery, 2022/12/23
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, G. Branden Robinson, 2022/12/24
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Russ Allbery, 2022/12/24
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus,
Russ Allbery <=
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, G. Branden Robinson, 2022/12/24
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Russ Allbery, 2022/12/24
Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Russ Allbery, 2022/12/23
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Richard Morse, 2022/12/23
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, G. Branden Robinson, 2022/12/24
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Russ Allbery, 2022/12/24
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, Nate Bargmann, 2022/12/24
- Re: man(7), hyphen, and minus, G. Branden Robinson, 2022/12/27