Fonts & Character SetsWhat is   (hexdump: C2 A0) in the input tex file?

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user49915
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed Apr 17, 2019 12:51 pm

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

Post by user49915 »

Consider the following input:

Code: Select all

\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?

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Stefan Kottwitz
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Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:44 pm

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

Post by Stefan Kottwitz »

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
LaTeX.org admin
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