* in tabular environment

[William F Hammond]

Hi David,

You write in reply to Fred Harthoorn:

> you have a typo in your example so it will not run at all but I assume
> that the real issue is that
>
> \\
> *

AIUI "*" is different from "[" in that \\* is a command name
-- isn't it? -- just as \vspace* is a command name.

Starred commands offer an example where a command name
can be broken, which is a step in syntactic peculiarity
beyond allowing whitespace between a command name and a
"{" or "[" introducing its argument.

> On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 at 14:02, Fred Harthoorn <f.harthoorn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Over the last 30 years I have made many tutorials and instructions in LaTeX
>>
>> And now for the first time I experiencing that a '*' is
>> not printed in the tabular environment, if it is the first
>> character on the line.
>> Is this a bug or has this character a special meaning at the start of the line?
>>
>> \begin{tabular{ll}
>> * & this star wil not be printed !?! \\
>> \end{tabular}
>> . . .

Of course, LaTeX is what it is, and users must live with
that.  Or users might some day be offered the opportunity to
take up the use of LaTeX Project sponsored LaTeX profiles.


                              -- Bill