How to type “<<test>>” in ttfamily?

Question

I'm trying to produce <<test>> text in \ttfamily, but it looks like:

«test»

Which is not what I'm looking for. When I'm trying $<<$test$>>$ the result is not correct as well because the symbols are not in \ttfamily.

This is full example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\texttt{<<test>>}
\end{document}

Answer 1

To avoid the combination of two < or > to « and » place a {} between them:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\texttt{<{}<test>{}>}
\end{document}

They are combined using the ligatures mechanism. So disabling this one e.g using microtype s \DisableLigatures would also work, but isn't recommended because it reduces the overall typeset quality.

---

You could also use \verb to typeset the <</>> verbatim. (There is also the shortvrb macro which allows you to make this shorter.)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\verb|<<|\texttt{test}\verb|>>|
\end{document}

If the content is only text without macros etc. you can use one \verb:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\verb|<<test>>|
\end{document}

Using shortvrb:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{shortvrb}
\MakeShortVerb\|
\begin{document}
|<<|\texttt{test}|>>|
|<<test>>|
\end{document}

Answer 2

What you are seeing is a ligature: In T1-encoding TeX replaces the << by the doublequote like it replace two dashes -- by an endash. You can avoid it with different methods (the last is drastic):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\texttt{<{}<test>{}>}

\verb+<<test>>+

{\fontencoding{OT1}\texttt{<<test>>}}

\ttfamily \pdfnoligatures\font <<test>> --
\end{document}

Answer 3

I would say that using \verb was undesirable anywhere; it's not just that it doesn't work in command arguments (in the absence of cprotect.sty, that is).

I would use one of the commands that define a robust command as expanding to a verbatim string:

\usepackage{verbdef}
...
\verbdef\llt|<<|
\verbdef\ggt|>>|
...
\texttt{\llt{}test\ggt}

(there are other packages that do this, but verbdef is the one I could remember)

Answer 4

another possibility is to go into "raw" tex code:

\texttt{\char`\<\char`\<test\char`\>\char`\>}

verbose, and works only on one character at a time, but it gets around any catcode problems that might otherwise be a bother.