## LaTeX forum ⇒ Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ What is   (hexdump: C2 A0) in the input tex file? Topic is solved

Information and discussion about fonts and character sets (e.g. how to use language specific characters)
user49915
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Apr 17, 2019 12:51 pm

### What is   (hexdump: C2 A0) in the input tex file?

Consider the following input:
\documentclass{standalone}\begin{document}$(\sigma_i, a_{i+1})$\end{document}

All the chars are pure ASCII except the char right after the comma: it is not space, but the byte sequence C2 A0 and is shown in emacs as a kind of an underscore. I discovered it in a source latex file at several places but do not know the purpose of it. pdflatex seems to make a horizontal space, whereas xe|lua latex seem to ignore it. Any idea what was intended and why?

Stefan Kottwitz
Posts: 9595
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:44 pm
That is a non-breaking space.

Perhaps an editor inserted it or it was copied with code from the Internet. I would replace it to be a normal space, such as via a script.

Stefan