Re: Zero Width Space

[Dave Kemper]

On 6/5/22, Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de> wrote:
> That's also too broad for my taste; here are a few more escape
> sequences that are non-printing and non-breaking unless i'm
> missing something: \{ \} \F \f \H \k \M \m \R \S \s \z
> The difference between \& and the others is that \& is a no-op
> whereas the others all have some side effect.

That's a great point.  All the use cases we cite for \& -- inhibiting
kerning, inhibiting beginning-of-line control characters, inhibiting
end-of-sentence detection -- are accomplished by any escape (printing
or not) appearing in that spot.  The property that sets \& apart from
all these others is that it does nothing else besides this: it's
no-opness.

Another advantage of the term "no-op" is that it makes redundant
qualifiers such as "non-printing."  If it does nothing, then that
automatically includes not printing anything.