At 09:53 +0000 1998/11/03, David Carlisle wrote: >This works for a few more cases, but only a few. What if the quote is >inside a font change, or a section head, or any other command, you still >have the potential problem of the lookahead coping with {}. I was able to make a \leturelet to detect {}: % Make a definition that uses \futurelet to check the next token, % and then pick up all arguments until the next token is a } or a \par. \newtoks\@tget \def\get{\@tget={}\@get} \def\@get{\futurelet\@next\@getA} \def\@getA{% \ifx\@next\@sptoken% \let\@@next\@getspace% \else\ifcat\noexpand\@next{% \let\@@next\@getarg% \else\ifcat\noexpand\@next}% \let\@@next\@getend% \@tget=\expandafter{\the\@tget\@get@end}% \else% \let\@@next\@gettoken% \fi\fi\fi% \@@next% } It is the funny section \else\ifcat\noexpand\@next{% \let\@@next\@getarg% \else\ifcat\noexpand\@next}% that makes it possible. I have no idea why it works; TeX seemed to accept it. >Of course you can follow the above to its logical conclusion of >implementing _everything_ via active characters and implementing your >own parsing routines _in_ TeX rather than using the parser built into >tex-the-program. This is certainly possible (some people have done >exactly that) but TeX isn't really the best language for implementing a >parser, and certainly isn't the fastest. It is extremely difficult to implement any general type of parser; TeX is not suitable for that. >If more involved contextual >analysis is required in the input stream then it probably makes more >sense to look to an extended system that can provide such extended >functionality. (Something like omega's OTP processes.) They may not be >quite what you want here, but the principle is the same, to make a >controlled extension of the underlying system rather than try to build a >tower of macros on the rather fragile sand that is tex-the-program. One needs a successor to TeX, or perhaps a TeX preprocessor. Hans Aberg * Email: Hans Aberg <mailto:[log in to unmask]> * Home Page: <http://www.matematik.su.se/~haberg/> * AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>