Remove space at the end of a macro

Question

For a particular work, I need old style footnotes, that are typeset before the word they refer to.

So I call \footnote before the word and it works fine, but it adds a space after the footnote mark. How can I get read of this space (in essence, the opposite of \xspace)?

Answer 1

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
  A test \footnote{a test foot}sentence.
\end{document}

I did not see the space you talked about in the question. Did you left a space or newline between the } and the letters following it?

Answer 2

Yan Zhou has probably given the irght answer, but I'd add that in similar cases, \ignorespaces or \unskip can be useful. Assume for instance that a macro you are using starts and ends with spurious spaces. Then you may be able to fix it without redefining it:

\newcommand{\badmacro}{ Hello }
\newcommand{\fixedmacro}{\ignorespaces\badmacro\unskip}

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
x\badmacro x\fixedmacro x
\end{document}