Printing verbatim command inputs in commands

Question

I want to define a command \mydef that does something like this:

\mydef{\foo{bar}}

produces

\def\foo{bar} \verb|\foo=bar|

The command:

\newcommand{\mydef}[1]{\def #1}

does the first bit, but I don't seem to be able to use verbatim in a command - how do I access the contents of #1? In this context I would be happy if I could just discard the first character...

Answer 1

You can use \string to print the command as string and \strip@prefix in combination with \meaning to display the macro content:

\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\mydef}[2]{%
    \def#1{#2}%
    {\ttfamily\string#1=\expandafter\strip@prefix\meaning#1}%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\mydef\foo{bar}

\end{document}