How to handle strings with commas in macros?

How to handle strings with commas in macros?

[William Denton]

I'm using macros to format names in a LaTeX export, like so:

#+latex_header: \newcommand\m[1]{\textsc{#1}}
#+macro: m \m{$1}

Thus

{{{m(William Denton)}}}

becomes

\m{William Denton}

on export and LaTeX will format it.  That works fine.  But in an index of names, 
if I want

{{{m(Denton, William)}}}

then Org takes that as two arguments to the macro, and outputs

\m{Denton}

Is there a way to get around this?

Thanks,

Bill

--
William Denton
https://www.miskatonic.org/
Librarian, artist and licensed private investigator.
Toronto, Canada

Re: How to handle strings with commas in macros?

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Thu, Apr 7, 2022 at 12:30 PM William Denton <wtd@pobox.com> wrote:

> I'm using macros to format names in a LaTeX export, like so:
>
> on export and LaTeX will format it.  That works fine.  But in an index of
> names,
> if I want
>
> {{{m(Denton, William)}}}
>
> then Org takes that as two arguments to the macro, and outputs
>
> \m{Denton}
>
> Is there a way to get around this?
>

The comma needs to be backslash escaped.

{{{m(Denton\, William)}}}

Ref: (org) Macro Replacement

> (1) Since commas separate the arguments, commas within arguments have
to be escaped with the backslash character.  So only those backslash
characters before a comma need escaping with another backslash
character.

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Re: How to handle strings with commas in macros?

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  7 Apr 2022 at 12:29, William Denton wrote:
> on export and LaTeX will format it.  That works fine.  But in an index of names,
> if I want
>
> {{{m(Denton, William)}}}

You have to escape the , unfortunately:

{{{m(Denton\, William)}}}

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, with org release_9.5.2-427-g40a348 in Emacs 29.0.50

Re: How to handle strings with commas in macros?

[William Denton]

On 7 April 2022, Kaushal Modi wrote:

> The comma needs to be backslash escaped.
>
> {{{m(Denton\, William)}}}
>
> Ref: (org) Macro Replacement

Aha!  Thanks to you and Eric for pointing this out.  I missed that footnote (and 
I should have tried escaping with a backslash anyway, since that's the solution 
to so many things).

I'd been looking at the documentation on the web site, as I usually do, but the 
pointer to the info page got me looking at that.  I'm going to start referring 
to it first and see how that goes.

Bill

--
William Denton
https://www.miskatonic.org/
Librarian, artist and licensed private investigator.
Toronto, Canada