# pmatrix with minimum bracket size

I want to typeset one-element vectors like so:

In this example, v and ware vectors. In the first line I used pmatrix, but the expression c(v) could easily be mistaken to mean "function c of v" because the brackets are regular size. So even if the vectors contain only one element, I would like them to look like in the second line. However, if they contain more elements the brackets should grow in size.

Ideally, I would like to be able to say

\begin{pmatrix}[min=\bigg]
\end{pmatrix}


MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{scrpage2, setspace, geometry}
\usepackage{textcomp, relsize, url}
\usepackage{xcolor, minitoc, tocloft}
\usepackage{amsmath, amsthm, amssymb, bbold, stmaryrd, latexsym}
\usepackage{array, booktabs, dcolumn, colortbl, longtable, multirow, bigdelim}

\begin{document}
$$x = c\begin{pmatrix}v\end{pmatrix} + d\begin{pmatrix}w\end{pmatrix}$$
$$x = c\bigg(\begin{matrix}v\end{matrix}\bigg) + d\bigg(\begin{matrix}w\end{matrix}\bigg)$$
\end{document}

• Parentheses being overloaded is one of the reasons why I prefer brackets for column vectors and matrices. – egreg Sep 15 '16 at 11:00
• For me, it's one of the reasons to always indicate multiplication with a $\cdot$, and not write function application with unnecessary parentheses. $f\:x$ is just as good as $f(x)$, and $c\cdot \vec{v}$ is certainly a lot clearer than any $c\Bigl( v\Bigr)$ hocus pocus. – leftaroundabout Sep 15 '16 at 15:51

You can define your own environment:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\newenvironment{vect}
{\left(\vphantom{\bigg|}\begin{matrix}}
{\end{matrix}\right)}

\begin{document}

$x = c\begin{vect}v\end{vect} + d\begin{vect}w\end{vect}$

$\begin{vect} a \end{vect} \quad \begin{vect} a \\ b \end{vect} \quad \begin{vect} a \\ b \\ c \end{vect}$

\end{document}


Never use  with LaTeX.

Frankly, this doesn't really sound like a nice idea.

• Why don't you like it? – alexraasch Sep 15 '16 at 11:19
• @alexraasch (IMHO) Relying on the size of parentheses as the only indicator of something is poor typography, the ambiguity isn't removed by this completly, for example I will now be curious why are your parentheses so stupidly large, but I wouldn't think that it's because you want to indicate a 1-dimensional vector this way. – yo' Sep 15 '16 at 11:26
• @yo': Ok, I agree. However, I'm not at liberty to change to, e.g., square brackets at the moment, as I am not the principal author of the article I'm writing. – alexraasch Sep 15 '16 at 11:38
• @alexraasch Having your own environment allows you to change the final format as you like without modifying the input file, except for the definition of vect. – egreg Sep 15 '16 at 11:47