Why does LaTeX issue \scriptsize warnings in math mode?

[Doug McKenna]

Thanks for the helpful responses. 

The combination of \scriptstyle, \scriptscriptstyle, and \mathtt{} seems to work equivalently, as long as the characters are all letters or digits. But what can be placed between the delimiters of \verb| ... | and what can be placed inside a \mathtt{ ... } are not the same, and I'm pretty sure the characters inside \mathtt{ ... } are more restricted. 

My problem is that I don't have control over the characters I want to be verbatimed; they are coming from somewhere else and being inserted into the LaTeX document. And I definitely want to be able to use a piece of verbatim text as a superscript or a subscript, and yes I know that's not the "right" thing for a math formula, except that in what I'm doing, it really is. 

So the following all seem to do what I want, and there are no LaTeX warnings or errors: 

\documentclass{letter} 
\begin{document} 

\verb|box7| 

$\hbox{\verb|box7|}$ 

{\setbox7=\hbox{\verb|box7|}$\box7$} 

{\setbox7=\hbox{\scriptsize \verb|box7|}$2^{\box7}$} 

{\setbox7=\hbox{\tiny \verb|box7|}$2^{2^{\box7}}$} 

\end{document} 

The second example works but is questionable according to previous responses. Are there downsides for the other examples that build the verbatim text in a box first, outside of math mode? 

Doug McKenna 
Mathemaesthetics, Inc. 








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