Lars Hellström <[log in to unmask]> writes: > \@fancyfor\@tempa:=<list>\do{\@tempa}{, \@tempa}{ and \@tempa} > and for <list> equal to A; A,B; A,B,C; A,B,C,D respectively get the results > A > A and B > A, B and C > A, B, C and D As it happens I was working on similar functionality recently for the amsrefs package (ftp://ftp.ams.org/pub/tex/amsrefs.zip). The package has a \PrintSeries function used to print author names in a bibliography when the data is a list of names in the form \name{Downes, Michael}\name{Hellström, Lars}... For AMS conventions your first/middle/last approach is not quite adequate because cases 2 and 3 must be printed as A and B A, B, and C (Note the extra comma.) And there are some other complications, as explained in the following commentary from amsrefs.dtx: % The \cn{PrintSeries} command prints a list of objects in series % form. The essential idea is to produce something like \qq{A, B, and % C} when we are given three elements A B C, with suitable variations % in the punctuation and other intervening material if the number of % elements is less or more than three. % % To generalize this process, we envision \cn{PrintSeries} being % called as %\PrintSeries{i0}{i1}{i2}{i3}{i4}{\do{A}\do{B}...} % where i0, \dots, i4 are material to be interpolated and the last % arg is a list of indeterminate length where each element consists % of a macro and its argument. The output, depending on the number of % elements, will be % i0 A i4 % 1 element % i0 A i1 B i4 % 2 elements % i0 A i2 B i3 C i4 % 3 elements % i0 A i2 B i2 C i2 ... X i2 Y i3 Z i4 % 26 elements % That is the simple explanation but in practice there are some % additional complications. What if user-supplied line breaks have to % be supported at the boundaries between elements? What if in % addition to adding material between elements we also want to apply % some handy function to each element (e.g., \cn{textsc})? Even % worse, what if we want the function to be different depending on % the position of the element in the list?? Indeed if this did not % happen to be the case with the current application I would not have % gone to the extra trouble of supporting it. But if it must be so, % then the output that we need from a list \verb'\do{A}\do{B}...' is % f0{A} % f0{A} p1 i1 f1{B} % f0{A} p2 i2 f2{B} p3 i3 f3{B} % and so on, where % \begin{itemize} % \item $f_n$ is a macro taking one argument, % \item $p_n$ is punctuation\mdash material that must precede a line % break if one occurs at this boundary, % \item $i_n$ other interpolated material, as before. % \end{itemize} % To reduce the number of distinct required objects we decree that % each element will get braces wrapped around it as a matter of % course; then it is possible for f1, f2, f3 to be assimilated into % the tail end of i1, i2, i3.