[OS X TeX] Gobble left

[Jonathan Kew]

On 15 Apr 2005, at 7:22 am, Peter Pagin wrote:

> Hi, all.
> Here's a TeX question, I guess. By means of
>
> \def\gobble #1{}
>
> a command \gobble is defined that deletes the next character (or 
> space) to the right,

Not precisely.... it would be more accurate to say that it deletes the 
next non-blank token or brace-delimited group. (Whitespace following 
\gobble will be skipped anyway, according to the standard TeX reading 
rules, before looking for the argument #1.)

> or replaces it by whatever one puts between the curly brackets in the 
> definition. My question is whether there is a method for doing the 
> same to the character to the left, i.e. preceding the occurrence of 
> the command.

I don't see any way to do this.

JK

--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>