General ⇒ recursive use of \newcommand?

[fergal]

I have a slightly advanced, and mostly pedagogical, question about using variables to define new commands in Latex.

Suppose I define a new command
\newcommand{\abbreviate}[2]{ #2 (#1)}

In the text, \abbreviate{USSR}{Union of Soviet Socialist Republics} will appear as "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)"

However, that's a lot to type, so I'd prefer to be able to define \ussr to do the same thing, and then \usa to expand to 'United States of America (USA)', and so forth. What I really want to do is to be able to say

Code: Select all

\abbreviate{USSR}{Union of Soviet Socialist Republics}
\abbreviate{USA}{United States of America }

and then in the text I could just type \USA and \USSR. What I tried was this:

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\newcommand{\abbreviate}[2]{
\newcommand{\#1}{#2 (#1)}
}

But latex complains about \#1 and I can't quite figure out what sequence of characters to replace it with to get the desired effect.

I know there's a package out there that will do this for me, but as I said this is mostly pedagogical -- I'm trying to take my first murky steps into Latex programming. Any help appreciated.

[sommerfee]

\newcommand{\#1}{#2 (#1)}

Use

Code: Select all

\expandafter\newcommand\csname#1\endcsname{#2 (#1)}

instead.

HTH,
Axel

[fergal]

Thanks, that did the job. I didn't know about \csname, I'll have to go read up on it.