Text Formatting ⇒ Spacing - Invisible text

[egan]

Since text is made up of boxes, and that is how LaTeX figures out the typesetting, I was wondering if there was a way to create spacing that would be the same size as a piece of text.

I.e.:

\foo{text} would create space the same size as "text" in the current typeface.
\foo{\texttt text} would create the space the same size as "text" in the current size and in the typewriter face.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi egan,

use \phantom{text}. There are variations like \hphantom and \vphantom for horizontal respectively vertical spacing.

Stefan