General ⇒ \string command behavior - Plain TeX

[renyalvarado]

Hi, I would like to learn Plain TeX and I'm reading Knuth's "The TeXBook".At Chapter 7, Knuth talks about the \string command and how it converts control sequences into lists of characters tokens. Why when I typed \string\TeX I got "TeX, but when I wrote {\tt \string\TeX} I got \TeX?

I guess it's something related to \escapechar, because when I changed this control sequence the output changed too:

Code: Select all

\escapechar=`^
\string\TeX

generates
^TeX

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Run this code (or click Open in writeLaTeX), and you can see that the backslash \ from the typewriter font is replaced by " in the font table of the roman font - at place '134 (92):

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fonttable}
\begin{document}
\fonttable{cmr8}
\fonttable{cmtt8}
\end{document}

cmr.png (21.84 KiB) Viewed 6673 times

cmtt.png (16.63 KiB) Viewed 6673 times

You may notice further differences regarding special symbols. In typewriter font, most used special symbols are different to those required in standard text.

Stefan

[cgnieder]

See also the same question on TeX.sx with currently two answers.

Regards