* in tabular environment

[Bruce Miller]

On 7/1/19 2:25 PM, William F Hammond via texhax wrote:
> 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.

It's often just an illusion;
commands like \vspace sniff for a following star.
Environments, otoh, are actually defined with or without
a star (using \csname environment*\endcsname).

bruce

> 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
> 
>