TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and related typesetting systems. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Consider a command definition
Warning 1 in test.tex line 2: Command terminated with space.
\newcommand{\ket}[1]{\left \lvert #1 \right \rangle}
^
This command is supposed to be used in math mode. However, the chktex linter complains that there's a "command terminated with space", presumably for the reasons described in this other post. Is there a recommended way to write the intended command, without getting a chktex warning?
As the maintainer of ChkTeX, this is one of the checks that I don't find personally useful. ChkTeX was originally written (I believe) for new users, and indeed this could be helpful for them because they may not know why \LaTeX and similar cause "missing spaces." I personally like linters a lot when they catch problems that you have. ChkTeX in particular needs some tweaking to be useful for an individual. So, if you don't think that this (or any other) check is useful then you should turn it off, e.g. by adding the following to your .chktexrc file:
CmdLine { --nowarn 1 }
That said, this warning does not fire in math mode, so putting it inside an \ensuremath is a perfectly reasonable solution, and using in the document would not cause a warning (since it would be in math mode).
You might also consider using the -H 0 command line arguments (e.g. in the CmdLine section) which turns off warnings in the preamble (i.e. before \begin{document} since there is often warning prone code there that isn't actually a problem (such as this).
In my opinion, adding it to Silent is the wrong solution since in practice it should always be used in math mode where it won't cause a warning.
\begin{document}” is really unclear; how's anybody supposed to know that -H 0 is the right key? How's anybody supposed to know that `Silent { <command> } adds to the list? How's anybody supposed to know that such warnings are not issued in math mode? Nothing about this is mentioned in the manual.
-H0 sounded good, but unfortunately I write my LaTeX documents modularly, i.e. I split sections into separate files and use \input (actually I use \subimportlevel from the modular package), so most of my tex files don't have a \begin{document} line.
Jul 7, 2020 at 20:34
There is a simple way, namely
\newcommand{\ket}[1]{\left \lvert#1 \right \rangle}
This code is completely equivalent to yours. On the other hand, you'll get the same warning if you have
\lvert x\rvert
in your document. Write the maintainers and ask them to add the commands.
In the meantime, you can create a chktexrc.local file that you can save somewhere containing
Silent
{
\rm \em \bf \it \sl \sf \sc \tt \selectfont
\rmfamily \sffamily \ttfamily \mdseries \bfseries
\slshape \scshape \relax
\vskip \pagebreak \nopagebreak
\textrm \textem \textbf \textit \textsl \textsf \textsc \texttt
\clearpage \ddots \dotfill \flushbottom \fussy \indent \linebreak
\onecolumn \pagebreak \pushtabs \poptabs \scriptsize \sloppy
\twocolumn \vdots
\today \kill \newline \thicklines \thinlines
\columnsep \space \item \tiny \footnotesize \small \normalsize
\normal \large \Large \LARGE \huge \Huge \printindex
\newpage \listoffigures \listoftables \tableofcontents
\maketitle \makeindex
\hline \hrule \vrule
\centering
\bigskip \medskip \smallskip
\noindent \expandafter
\noindent \expandafter
\makeatletter \makeatother
\columnseprule
\textwidth \textheight \hsize \vsize
\if \fi \else
\csname \endcsname
\z@ \p@ \@warning \typeout
\dots \ldots \input \endinput \nextline \leavevmode \cdots
\appendix \listfiles \and \quad
\hskip \vfill \vfil \hfill \hfil \topmargin \oddsidemargin
\frenchspacing \nonfrenchspacing
\begingroup \endgroup \par
\vrefwarning \upshape \headheight \headsep \hoffset \voffset
\cdot \qquad
\left \right
\qedhere
\xspace
\addlinespace \cr \fill \frontmatter
\toprule \midrule \bottomrule
\lvert \rvert
}[
# Here you can put regular expressions to match Silent macros. It was
# designed for the case where you have many custom macros sharing a
# common prefix, but can of course be used for other things.
# Support ConTeXt to at least some extent
\\start.* \\stop.*
]
and call chktexrc with
chktex -l path/to/chktexrc.local mydocument.tex
with the suitable replacement to path/to, of course.
Unfortunately there seems to be no way to add to the ignored keywords at runtime other than copying all of them and increment the list.
How did I find the original list? Find on your system the file chktexrc, open it and copy the relevant part.
It's a silly warning by chktex. It's silly because a space is the correct way to terminate a command. It should be the other way around: only some commands should not be terminated simply by a space, for instance \TeX or \LaTeX.
So there should be a NoSilent list, rather than a long list for which termination with a space is usually the best choice.
NoSilent list because then the user would have to remember to add ever command they make that should not have a space. This way, they will be reminded when a new command causes a warning. Though, again, I don't find this warning to be that useful personally.
Jul 5, 2020 at 17:57
Silent { \lvert \rvert } should be enough to add them. If you want to override what's there, then you need to use Silent = { \lvert \rvert }
Jul 5, 2020 at 18:09
NoSilent option.
chktex. Ignore it.