The code \thepage of yields the output 3of.
I can fix it by writing \thepage~of, but what causes this in the first place? I can't imagine when it would be useful.
[Tex/LaTex] Why don’t I get any space after \thepage
macrosspacing
Related Solutions
TeX ignores spaces after control sequences (formed by letters) and performs complete expansion when doing a \write.
The tokens it sees when you do \writefile{\Insert stuff.} are (separated by • just for clarity)
\Insert•s•t•u•f•f•.
and there's no space. The expansion gives
Insertstuff
When you put a pair of braces, the space after them is not ignored (it doesn't follow a control sequence):
\Insert•{•}• •s•t•u•f•f•.
With \Insert\ stuff it's the same: the token "control space" is unexpandable, so you get
Insert\ stuff.
With \Insert~stuff you lose: the complete expansion of ~ is not what you'd expect: it's the set of instructions necessary to "print a non breaking space". Indeed LaTeX has \protected@write to cope with this kind of commands that should not be expanded during a write.
As zeroth explained, the expansion of \space is a space; but it's not ignored after \Insert, because when TeX is reading tokens it doesn't yet see the expansion of \space, but that token (which undoubtedly isn't a space token).
It's really your choice. If you want to use \ohm the way you defined it, the load the gensymb package and redefine \ohm:
\usepackage{gensymb}
\AtBeginDocument{\renewcommand{\ohm}{$\Omega$ }}
The redefinition is delayed until \AtBeginDocument, as gensymb looks for the presence of textcomp in order to define an appropriate \ohm.
Forcing a space after the command wouldn't always work, as you'll see when you use something like Check out this \ohm. For general attempts at adding spaces of commands, see Space after LaTeX commands.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{gensymb}
\AtBeginDocument{\renewcommand{\ohm}{$\Omega$ }}
\newcommand{\fahren}{\degree F}
\newcommand{\kohm}{k$\Omega$ }
\newcommand{\Mohm}{M$\Omega$ }
\begin{document}
test \ohm
test \kohm
test \Mohm
I measure temperature in \fahren. test \ohm.
\end{document}
Best Answer
A TeX macro 'eats' the white space after it, so
\TeX nicianis typeset as TeXnician, and\thepage ofis typeset as3of. You can either type\thepage~of, or\thepage\ of, or\thepage{} of. In the first case the space is unbreakable, in the others it is not.Update: if you need space after macros for any reason, try
xspacepackage: