Removing a space placed after a linebreak at the end of \lstinline

Question

I am using the listings package to represent verbatim font with breaklines set to true so that line breaks are produced automatically. I have set \emergencystretch to an abnormally large value since it seems the best way to produce (relatively) good looking text without manually editing the formatting all over the place.

However, when the line is broken immediately after a \lstinline (shorthand form of = used in the example below), a space is placed at the start of the following line. How to I remove this space automatically?

\documentclass[10pt,a5paper]{book}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{breaklines=true,basicstyle=\ttfamily}
\lstMakeShortInline=
\setlength{\emergencystretch}{35pt}

\begin{document}

Blah blah blah, standard text to highlight that usually the line breaks are normal and no space follows them. The actual issue is highlighted in the next paragraph.

OK. My name is Eddie. This is my first question. =How quick= will it be answered? Only time will tell. Seriously though, it would be nice to get an answer within about 3 and a half minutes.

\end{document}

Produces: (check the space between "quick" and "will" - end of first line, second paragraph.

My initial thought was to specify \lstset{...postbreak=\ignorespaces} but this doesn't work since the linebreak occurs after the \lstinline.

Perhaps it is possible to use a \ifthenelse statement but it would require me to have a switch which lets me know if a linebreak is produced following a \lstinline command (could be hassle since this will only be determined after typesetting).

Any ideas would be massively appreciated.

Answer 1

listings has problems if the end of a breakable inline listing is at the end of the line. See e.g. also listings package introduces unnecessary linebreaks.

You can try breakatwhitespace:

\documentclass[10pt,a5paper]{book}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{breaklines=true,breakatwhitespace,
        basicstyle=\ttfamily,alsoletter=\\\{\}\*\[\]\-}
\lstMakeShortInline=
%\setlength{\emergencystretch}{35pt}

\begin{document}

Blah blah blah, standard text to highlight that usually the line breaks are normal and no space follows them. The actual issue is highlighted in the next paragraph.

OK. My name is Eddie. This is my first question. =How quick= will it be answered? Only time will tell. Seriously though, it would be nice to get an answer within about 3 and a half minutes.

\end{document}

Or load microtype

\documentclass[10pt,a5paper]{book}
\usepackage{listings,microtype}
\lstset{breaklines=true,
        basicstyle=\ttfamily,alsoletter=\\\{\}\*\[\]\-}
\lstMakeShortInline=
%\setlength{\emergencystretch}{35pt}

\begin{document}

Blah blah blah, standard text to highlight that usually the line breaks are normal and no space follows them. The actual issue is highlighted in the next paragraph.

OK. My name is Eddie. This is my first question. =How quick= will it be answered? Only time will tell. Seriously though, it would be nice to get an answer within about 3 and a half minutes.

\end{document}

But none will imho handle every case, so you will have to check visually if everything is okay.

Answer 2

As a workaround if you have a document you just need to get out then you can do

\documentclass[10pt,a5paper]{book}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{breaklines=true,basicstyle=\ttfamily,alsoletter=\\\{\}\*\[\]\-}
\lstMakeShortInline=
\setlength{\emergencystretch}{35pt}

%\showoutput
\begin{document}

Blah blah blah, standard text to highlight that usually the line breaks are normal and no space follows them. The actual issue is highlighted in the next paragraph.

OK. My name is Eddie. This is my first question. =How quick=\linebreak[2] will it be answered? Only time will tell. Seriously though, it would be nice to get an answer within about 3 and a half minutes.

\end{document}

but I'm missing something at present I don't see why the space isn't dropped if for example you use \linebreak[0] I may add to this answer later. It's not related to the short = processing, you get the same from \lstinline|How quick|

Ah listings is adding a break point at the end of the text (which explains the behaviour at least) if you know that you don't want that inline listing ti break you could use \leavevmode\hbox{=How quick#} rather than using the \linebreak as above but if you do want to allow it to break but not at the end, it seems some re-arrangement of the listings internals would be required.

Answer 3

I suggest using minted instead (requires to run LaTeX with the -shell-escape option and to install pygmentize):

\documentclass[10pt,a5paper]{book}
\usepackage{minted}
\usemintedstyle{bw}

\begin{document}

Blah blah blah, standard text to highlight that usually
the line breaks are normal and no space follows them.
The actual issue is highlighted in the next paragraph.

OK. My name is Eddie. This is my first
question. \mintinline{tex}=How quick= will it be answered?
Only time will tell. Seriously though,
it would be nice to get an answer within
about 3 and a half minutes.

\end{document}