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Questions tagged [grouping]

{grouping} is about the grouping mechanism in TeX, and about local and global assignments.

152 votes
2 answers
61k views

When should one use \begingroup instead of \bgroup?

Is there ever a case when the use of \begingroup is preferred to \bgroup? Obviously, \bgroup is necessary in cases where you need to have balanced braces and thus cannot use {, but when is it ...
TH.'s user avatar
  • 63.1k
53 votes
2 answers
84k views

Temporarily increase line spacing

How do I temporarily increase line spacing? I have some text on my title page: \begin{center} { \Large \textbf{The Great Thesis About Some Very Great Things Indeed With a Pretty Long Title That Will ...
Enchilada's user avatar
  • 2,313
46 votes
1 answer
4k views

] inside an optional argument

I accidentally discovered (here) that a closing square bracket within an optional argument delimited by [ ] can cause problems. Here is example code illustrating the issue: \documentclass{article} \...
Lover of Structure's user avatar
41 votes
3 answers
13k views

When to use @ in an \if statement

I am new to LaTeX and so this question might come across as rather basic. It might also reflect my biases/assumptions from my C/C++ programming days. I was seeing the code of the 'exam' class and ...
Abhinav's user avatar
  • 511
40 votes
3 answers
15k views

Limit macro/newcommand scope to section

How can I limit the scope of a \newcommand to a \section? This is what I'd like to have: The command is defined only inside the \section, not globally; The command scope is that \section and cannot ...
Daniel's user avatar
  • 645
31 votes
3 answers
7k views

What does \begingroup\expandafter…\endgroup do?

I often see code of the following form in package implementations (this example is from the LaTeX3 sources): \begingroup\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter\endgroup \expandafter\ifx\csname directlua\...
Andrey Vihrov's user avatar
29 votes
1 answer
6k views

Is there a way to have an "empty" environment to merely limit scope of declarations?

I am fairly new to LaTeX, so I apologize if this is a beginner question, but I have not found a good way to query for it otherwise. I have observed that when I use an environment like \begin{itemize}....
merlin2011's user avatar
  • 3,373
28 votes
3 answers
8k views

\global\renewcommand equivalent of \global\def

The following MWE works just fine, but I had to resort to using \global\def (not that there's anything wrong with it). The intent of the MWE is to provide access to the value of macro as set in an ...
Peter Grill's user avatar
28 votes
4 answers
2k views

Kerning between bold and non-bold text

I'd like to write a word in bold followed by a comma and a non-bold word, like this: \textbf{why}, blah If I just write why, TeX inserts a kern to shift the comma a little closer to the "y". But ...
Wyzard's user avatar
  • 575
27 votes
6 answers
2k views

How do I get a value out of a group?

I've just recovered from my first real foray into LaTeX3 programming. It was ... an experience. Not a completely unpleasant one and once I'd gotten used to the syntax then I found it a lot easier ...
Andrew Stacey's user avatar
27 votes
5 answers
3k views

Is there a way to set a *global* key value using `pgfkeys`?

The simple answer to this question appears to be "No"; quoting from the pgf manual: The setting of a key is always local to the current TeX group. However, this is very annoying because it means ...
Andrew Stacey's user avatar
25 votes
3 answers
4k views

What is the difference between local and global in a TeX meaning?

In tikz declare function and babel french option it came to the question about the difference between local and global in a TeX meaning. In the linked question the babel shorthand ; should be ...
Tobi's user avatar
  • 56.8k
25 votes
3 answers
1k views

What are the effects of an empty group, {}?

In order to have a syntactic space after a no-argument command, one is taught to delimit the command token with an empty group ({}), like this: \somecommand{} more LaTeX material. However an empty ...
Lover of Structure's user avatar
23 votes
1 answer
2k views

Global scope or permanent length or savebox

I am trying to save a minipage width and height in one environment, and use these dimensions in a subsequent environment of mine, to make a picture environment. The idea is to create a picture on the ...
alchemit's user avatar
  • 233
20 votes
3 answers
1k views

Should LaTeX counters always be modified globally?

In this answer, egreg states that "LaTeX counters should always be modified globally". However, the etoolbox package provides the \defcounter macro which will assign a value to a previously ...
lockstep's user avatar
  • 252k

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