In LaTeX, you can use \char`
followed by a symbol to get that symbol. For example \char`b
or \char`\b
would just yield the letter b
.
- Which symbols/letters does that work for? Two cases I've found that yield different symbols are
\char`{
and\char`}
. Is there any sort of reason why those two don't work the way you would think? - Why does this happen in the first place? Just typing out
`b
doesn't give you anything special, so why does it work in the context of a\char
? - Why is the backslash ignored in things like
\char`\_
when there's a valid command for\_
?
I'm still new to LaTeX and it's hard to Google symbol-related stuff like this, so that's why I'm asking here. Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
It is a misunderstanding to attach the left quote to the
\char
command as you do by writing\char`
.\char
expects as argument a number. With the left quote you are converting the next character or single-character command to its character code (which is a number) if TeX is currently looking for a number.So
`b
and`\b
both give the number 62 in such a context.You can use this syntax in all places where a number is expected:
The backslash is needed only for special chars. E.g.
`\%
,`\{
,`\}
,`\\
but it doesn't harm to add it always. In this context it gives the character "itself".