The most basic operation is concatenation, for which the operator is
invisible. It works exactly like you think. Entering x y z
produces
Related to concatenation is the empty body. It can occur only as operand
of |
, *
or +
or within parentheses. A safe way to
write the empty body is ()
, which displays as
i.e., nothing. However, the invisible empty body is useful with the
repetition operators, as will be seen below.
A feature related to concatenation is the ability to split long
horizontal sequences with \\
.
As an example,
a b c d e \\ f g h i j
results in
It is possible to create horrible graphic constructions with this
operator, for example \\ | \\
:
or ( \\ * \\ ) \\
:
Nevertheless, every input should result in reasonable output.