2

I am typesetting a long mathematical text (lecture notes), in which I use the alphabets

\mathbb A
\mathcal A
\mathfrak A

very often, so I decided to name them

\A \sA \fA

(For bb A, script A, fraktur A resp.). Now I want to shorten my preamble by creating a helper

\newcommand{\mathletter}[1]{%
    \newcommand{\#1}{\mathbb #1}
    \newcommand{\s#1}{\mathcal #1}
    \newcommand{\f#1}{\mathfrak #1}
}

which doesn't work since the \#1 etc. seem to not be expanded.
How can I wirte a macro which defines those three commands given a single letter as input?

Thanks for any help.

Improve this question
16
  • It is strange. Why not define 3 new commands? If your code works what would you type: \mathletter{A}?
    – Sigur
    Jan 27, 2014 at 14:23
  • Because that means 26*3 = 78 lines of code vs. 36+5 = 41 lines, about half and much more readable than a bunch of \newcommand{\X}{\mathbb X} lines
    – AlexR
    Jan 27, 2014 at 14:26
  • 2
    This might be what you're looking for: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/28704/…
    – Snicksie
    Jan 27, 2014 at 14:30
  • 1
    Does this suffice: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \def\B#1{\mathbb #1} \def\C#1{\mathcal #1} \def\F#1{\mathfrak #1} \begin{document} $\B A \C A \F A $ \end{document}
    – Steven B. Segletes
    Jan 27, 2014 at 14:34
  • 1
    @AlexR, you don't need to retype. You can use Find/Replace tools.
    – Sigur
    Jan 27, 2014 at 14:37

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

Thanks to @Snicksie, I have been able to come up with the following:

Note that this is not really "beautiful" and that it overwrites the commands \H,\L,\O,\P,\S but I have confirmed that I need none of them and "manually" undefined them so I get errors when I oversee any other commands.

\newcommand{\mathletter}[1]{%
    \expandafter\newcommand\csname #1\endcsname{\mathbb #1}
    \expandafter\newcommand\csname s#1\endcsname{\mathcal #1}
    \expandafter\newcommand\csname f#1\endcsname{\mathfrak #1}
}%
\let\H\undefined
\let\L\undefined
\let\O\undefined
\let\P\undefined
\let\S\undefined
\mathletter A
\mathletter B
\mathletter C
...
\mathletter Z

Another very elegant solution, thanks to @StevenB.Segelets is to define:

\def\B#1{\mathbb #1}
\def\C#1{\mathcal #1}
\def\F#1{\mathfrak #1}

And use those slighly different commands then. This doesn't redefine any existing macros and therefor is probably a cleaner solution, but requires to change previous syntax (\A, \sA, \fA) in all documents and thus requires some "rewriting".

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .