Create new command based on an existing one, but with certain characters escaped

Question

I have to escape underscores very frequently inside \texttt, because I use it to mark functions and variables.

I'd like to redefine \texttt, under different name, so I could write \mycommand{my_variable_name} instead of \texttt{my\_variable\_name}.

Answer 1

You are done with

\newcommand{\myvar}[1]{%
  \texttt{\detokenize{#1}}%
}

provided you load fontenc with the T1 option. Otherwise you need category code changes, which make the command not suitable to be in the argument to another command.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\newcommand{\myvar}[1]{%
  \texttt{\detokenize{#1}}%
}

\begin{document}

Here is a variable \myvar{my_variable_name} and also
in a description
\begin{description}
\item[\myvar{my_variable_name}] is a nice variable
\end{description}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can try to use verbatim mode, i.e. \verb!my_name! -- this is output always as \texttt or use xparse and define a command with verbatim argument 'v', but this macro can't be used in another macro.

This works with spaces too.

Note: The \begingroup...\endgroup is to prevent the leaking of \ttfamily to the following text.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xparse}

\NewDocumentCommand{\mycommand}{+v}{%
  \begingroup
  \ttfamily #1%
  \endgroup
}

\begin{document}
\verb!my_variable_name!

\mycommand{my_variable_name}

\end{document}