Conditional \bye?

Question

Editing a huge document is painfully slow. So one splits it into pieces and has a main document that does \input this and \input that. But: While I'm editing this.tex I want a \bye at the end to make a preview work right, but if the file ends with \bye the compilation of the master document stops after \input this.

There must be a standard solution; the title is conjecturing maybe there's a way to say "\bye, unless this file is being inputted"...

Answer 1

One solution might be to define a custom \bye command, for example \mybye, in the main document. In the subdocument you can perform a check if this command is defined, if not then you define it to be \bye. The definition in the main document can be empty.

Checking if a command exists can be done with \ifcsname (which is an e-TeX macro).

MWE, main document:

Hello from master document\par
\def\mybye{}
\input subdocument
more text in master document
\bye

subdocument:

\ifcsname mybye\endcsname\else\def\mybye{\csname bye\endcsname}\fi
Hello from subdocument\par
\mybye

Answer 2

You can use a macro only defined in the main file.

file dcu.tex

\def\ABCDEFGHIJK{}

\input dcu1

\input dcu2

\bye

File dcu1.tex

This is the first file

\ifx\ABCDEFGHIJK\undefined\csname bye\expandafter\endcsname\fi

File dcu2.tex

This is the second file

\ifx\ABCDEFGHIJK\undefined\csname bye\expandafter\endcsname\fi

Answer 3

If you are using latex, you can use expl3 to define a boolean \l_bye_bool (initially set to false) to judge if an input should be done.

• \bye set \l_bye_bool to true
• \myinput judge whether to input a file according to \l_bye_bool

Then if a1.tex contains a \bye, following \myinput will do nothing.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\bool_new:N \l_bye_bool
\bool_gset_false:N \l_bye_bool
\cs_new_protected:Nn \l_bye_cs: {\bool_gset_true:N \l_bye_bool}
\cs_new_protected:Nn \l_input_cs:n {
  \if_bool:N \l_bye_bool {}
  \else: {\input{#1}}
  \fi:
}
\NewDocumentCommand {\bye} { } {\l_bye_cs:}
\NewDocumentCommand {\myinput} { m } {\l_input_cs:n {#1}}
\ExplSyntaxOff

\begin{document}
\myinput{a1.tex}

\myinput{a2.tex}
\end{document}