\newcommand and name of command

Question

I would like to automatically generate commands like

\newcommand{\Air}{\gls{air}}
\newcommand{\Earth}{\gls{earth}}
...

to use with glossaries package, without using \newcommand for every entry of the glossary. Is this possible and how?

Stating this differently, is it possible to automatically create commands of the type \Abbr where Abbr is the uppercase form of the abbr argument in

\newglossaryentry{abbr}{name=...}

Answer 1

Assuming that you want \Abbr to print the uppercased contents of the name field of the abbr glossary entry, this is a way.

I've used the trick described by egreg in this answer to define \Abbr.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{glossaries}

\let\oldglossaryentry\newglossaryentry
\renewcommand{\newglossaryentry}[2]{%
\def\tempname##1##2\relax{%
  \uppercase{\expandafter\gdef\csname ##1}##2\endcsname{\MakeUppercase{\glsentrytext{##1##2}}}%
}%
\tempname#1\relax%
\oldglossaryentry{#1}{#2}}

\newglossaryentry{abbr}
{
  name={abbreviation},
  description={description of abbreviation},
}

\makeglossaries

\begin{document}

\Abbr

\printglossaries
\end{document} 

Answer 2

As extension of Roelof's answer:

One can use the LaTeX helper macros \@car and \@cdr to extract the 1st letter of a given name, for example:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\makeatletter
\providecommand*\newfloat@capitalize[2]{%
  \edef\newfloat@tempa{\gdef\noexpand#1{\@car#2\@nil}}%
  \uppercase\expandafter{\newfloat@tempa}%
  \edef\newfloat@tempa{%
    \noexpand\g@addto@macro\noexpand#1{\@cdr#2\@nil}}%
  \newfloat@tempa}
\newcommand*\mynewglos[2]{%
  \newglossaryentry{#1}{#2}%
  \@namedef{#1}{\gls{#1}}%
  \newfloat@capitalize\@tempa{#1}%
  \@namedef{\@tempa}{\Gls{#1}}%
}
\makeatother

\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries{}
\begin{document}
\mynewglos{electrolyte}{name=electrolyte,description={solution able to conduct electric current}}
\gls{electrolyte} or \electrolyte{} or \Gls{electrolyte} or \Electrolyte
\printglossaries
\end{document}

Some notes:

• \@car and \@cdr and their usage are documented in the LaTeX source.
• \newfloat@capitalize is taken from my newfloat package and defines the 1st argument (=command) to the 2nd argument (=name) but with 1st letter capitalized. (It is defined with \providecommand so using the newfloat package in the document does not make any harm. As alternative one could give that macro a new name, or integrate it into the definition of \mynewglos which would eliminate the need of a helper macro.)
• The (helper) macro, in this case \@tempa will be defined globally. This is caused by the usage of the LaTeX helper macro \g@addto@macro which has no companion macro \l@addto@macro which does the same thing but locally. (But \l@addto@macro is offered by many LaTeX packages, e.g. the KOMA-Script document classes.) As an alternative one could use the eTeX primitive \unexpanded for doing the same thing without helper macro, see the definition of \l@addto@macro provided by KOMA-Script as an example.

Answer 3

Creating a macro from a parameter where the first letter has to be capitalized turns out to be extremely difficult (or I am doing something wrong). It comes down to the fact that \uppercase is not expandable. And \uppercase{\csname #1\endcsname} would capitalize the entire word...

The easiest thing that I can think of is to give the uppercase word as a parameter as well. That is, you could use the following:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\def\mynewglos#1#2#3{%
  \newglossaryentry{#1}{#3}%
  \expandafter\def\csname #1\endcsname{\gls{#1}}%
  \expandafter\def\csname #2\endcsname{\Gls{#1}}%
}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries{}
\begin{document}
\mynewglos{electrolyte}{Electrolyte}{name=electrolyte,description={solution able to conduct electric current}}
\gls{electrolyte} or \electrolyte{} or \Gls{electrolyte} or \Electrolyte
\printglossaries
\end{document}

Note that this defines \Abbr as the capitalized version \Gls instead of the regular version. You can simply change that in the definition containing #2. If it is not required, you can also remove the lowercase definitions by removing the definition containing #1.

If someone has a good way to define \Abbr from a macro where only abbr is passed as an argument, I would very much like to see it :)