Can you think of a reason why you might want ‘A12’ to be a ‹hex digit› even though the letter A has category 11? (Don't worry if your answer is “no.”)For the record, my answer was “yes.” Unfortunately, my reason wasn't correct.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Knuth quote II
Okay, this one isn't a comment in code, yet it amuses me anyway. This is Exercise 24.1 in The TeXbook.
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What was the answer given?
ReplyDeleteThe answer is (paraphrasing, of course) that if you use \meaning\cs where \cs is a control sequence defined by \chardef or \mathchardef, then TeX outputs the value in hex and like all other uses of \meaning, the nonspace characters have catcode 12.
ReplyDeleteFor example \meaning\@cclv expands to \char"FF.
My answer was also yes but mine was the correct reason given in the Appendix A.
ReplyDelete