Right way to write commands and parameters

macrosminted

I was about to ask a question related to what I thought was a bug in the minted package, but I now realise that I'm to blame for not defining commands correctly. I've always believed it was as simple as:

\newcommand{\mycommand}[1]{do some stuff with parameter #1}

But I was wrong: the following shorthands I tried to write duplicate the # character, and things are even worse if I decide to use %, which gets parsed as a LaTeX comment rather than a modulo operator.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}

\usepackage{minted}
\newcommand{\shellinline}[1]{\mintinline{shell}{#1}}
\newcommand{\pythoninline}[1]{{\mintinline{shell}{#1}}}

\begin{document}

\noindent This is a ``shell comment'' with mintinline: \mintinline{shell}{# comment} % prints # comment

\noindent This is a ``shell comment'' with my command: \shellinline{# comment} % prints ## comment

\noindent This is a ``python comment'' with mintinline: \mintinline{python}{# comment} % prints # comment

\noindent This is a ``python comment'' with my command: \pythoninline{# comment} % prints ## comment

\end{document}

What am I doing wrong, and what is the right way to write these commands?

Best Answer

You can not use verbatim-like commands in the argument or definition of another command.

If you have

\mycommand{zzz % zzz}

Then the % is already seen as a comment (and so the closing } is not seen at all) so zzz % zzz is never passed to the inner minted command.

Such commands need to change the parsing rules before grabbing the argument.

The minted package provides a \newmintinline command to define shortcut commands that call \mintedinline with specific options.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] \newcommand and comma separated parameters

I think you should ask what you want in full generality. For your concrete example,

\newcommand*\swap[1]{\doswap#1\relax}
\def\doswap#1,#2\relax{{#2,#1}}

should work, although I didn't test it.

[Tex/LaTex] How to write readable commands

I like more the LaTeX way of marking environments, because it provides a neat distinction between environments and commands: when something goes wrong I can always search for \begin or \end. The ConTeXt way is not more readable, in my opinion.

In general I never indent the contents of environments: I find that distracting and a waste of space on the screen. A good syntax highlighter is sufficient to find visual clues. But I always put \begin and \end commands on a new line in the document and use at least two blank lines before sectioning commands. And my editor highlights \begin and \end differently than normal commands. This can't be done with \summary-\endsummary pairs, unless you teach the editor all such pairs.

I always try to properly indent macro definitions, as Didier Verna seems to recommend, especially when \if... are involved. Of course

\newcommand{\macro}{\@ifstar{\@macros}{\@macro}}

won't receive the "proper" treatment

\newcommand{\macro}{%
  \@ifstar
    {\@smacro}
    {\@macro}%
 }

but more complicated things will.

As an aside, I find also that \def\summary#1\endsummary{...} is not a good way to define your environment:

\def\summary{%
\baselineskip11pt
\leftskip3em\rightskip3em
\noindent
\textbf{Summary.}\quad}
\def\endsummary{\bigskip\par}

would be much better as it doesn't have to read all the argument just to reread it again for typesetting, but I understand it's just an example.

If you prefer this way of doing, then

\newcommand{\newTeXenvironment}[1]{%
  \expandafter\def\csname #1\endcsname{\begin{#1+}}%
  \expandafter\def\csname stop#1\endcsname{\end{#1+}}%
  \newenvironment{#1+}}

\newTeXenvironment{summary}
  {\baselineskip16pt
    \leftskip3em\rightskip3em
    \noindent
    \textbf{Summary.}\quad}
   {\bigskip\par}

will allow you to say

\summary
<text of the summary>
\stopsummary

in pure ConTeXt style. Well, kind of.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] \newcommand and comma separated parameters

[Tex/LaTex] How to write readable commands

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