[texhax] Fwd: Re: enviroment/ifthen

[Uwe Lück]

The message below is continued under thread `Low-level TeX question: string 
substitution macro' -- Uwe. [that's all -- for the archive]

>At 15:32 11.02.09, Toby Cubitt wrote:
> >Uwe Lück wrote:
> > >> At 13:38 08.02.09, wawan wrote:
> > >>> I need help how to build sty in latex ( environment ) that can replace
> > >>> squences of chars with my symbols. For example if there input chars 
> "SU"
> > >>> than replace with XY ( my symbols from metafont).
> > >> [...]
> > > You might reason whether your actual task is worth such efforts. If the
> > > task arises all the time with new projects and with a large number of
> > > different strings, this may be the case. I have made such a thing, yet I
> > > can't release it as it is. This works on entire files, not environments.
> >
> >If you do want to embark on this foolish quest :-), perhaps the xstring
> >package might help?
>
>In my earlier posting, I had pointed to
>
>      http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/bytopic.html#parsingfiles
>
>-- some offers from which to choose, I choosed which worked at once; it is
>especially helpful if the string to be manipulated is not addressed by an
>explicit list but by a macro name.
>
> >Even if the task arises frequently, a simple sed script (or similar)
> >will be far quicker to write, easier to maintain, more robust...and
> >generally better in almost every way. In my experience, string
> >substitution is just not a task that LaTeX is well suited to. It's not
> >difficult to integrate running your source through a sed script into
> >your LaTeX build procedure (you could even write a quick Makefile).
>
>I am thinking of users who don't know other program languages than TeX
>and/or for whom TeX is most easily accessible, or who rather understand
>documentations of (La)TeX packages than of other programs. ted (bytopic) is
>a "TeX substitute" for sed.
>
>Cheers,
>
>      Uwe.