Obviously if a paper contains a large number of occurrences
of an acute accent over a letter `e',
would be a great nuisance.
provides a way in which you can store an arbitrary
collection of text in a `string',
and thereafter use the string name as a shorthand
Strings are one of several
mechanisms whose judicious use
with less effort and organize
so that extensive format changes
can be made with few editing changes.
A reference to a string is replaced by whatever
the string was defined as.
Strings are defined with the command
String names may be either one or two characters long,
for one character names or
given the definition of the string
If a string must begin with blanks, define it as
The double quote signals the beginning of the definition.
There is no trailing quote;
the end of the line terminates the string.
A string may actually be several lines long;
line, it is thrown away and the next line
added to the current one.
So you can make a long string simply by ending each line
but the last with a backslash:
Strings may be defined in terms of other strings, or even in terms of themselves;
we will discuss some of these possibilities later.