Nesting Nightmares

Question

I am trying to place this in my document

Of course, if you have access to wolframalpha you can do this:

\href{https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=interpolatingpolynomial%7B%7Bx_0,y_0%7D,%7Bx_1,y_1%7D,%7Bx_2,y_2%7D%7D}{ interpolatingpolynomial{{x_0,y_0},{x_1,y_1},{x_2,y_2}} }

and I get an error message about a missing $. If I tell TexShop to Run anyway it produces

Clearly I have to escape curly braces.... and adding a \ to each of the curly braces belonging to interpolatingpolynomial, I get

All good....

BUT, is there some way to a) avoid the compiler initially choking so I don't have to tell it to Run anyway, and b) make this simpler?

Answer 1

You must use math mode to typeset the math-y part of the explanatory string. And, be sure to write \{ and \} to generate curly braces.

You could place the math part of the second argument of \href in a \detokenize wrapper. This will render the characters in the string "as is", i.e., without any TeX-special meaning. However, I strongly suspect that this would be doing your readers a serious disservice.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[hyphens,spaces]{url}
\usepackage[colorlinks,allcolors=blue]{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\href{https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=interpolatingpolynomial%7B%7Bx_0,y_0%7D,%7Bx_1,y_1%7D,%7Bx_2,y_2%7D%7D}{ 
interpolatingpolynomial$\{\{x_0,y_0\},\{x_1,y_1\},\{x_2,y_2\}\}$ }    

\medskip
\href{https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=interpolatingpolynomial%7B%7Bx_0,y_0%7D,%7Bx_1,y_1%7D,%7Bx_2,y_2%7D%7D}{
interpolatingpolynomial\detokenize{{{x_0,y_0},{x_1,y_1},{x_2,y_2}}}}
\end{document}