Exercises and answers for LATEX∗

Revision 25 February 1994

Charles Wells
Department of Mathematics
Case Western Reserve University
University Circle
Cleveland, OH 44106-7058
USA
[email protected]

May 24, 2009

1 Description
Ans.sty is a LATEX style file. It allows you to write exercises and their
answers together in a LATEX document. When composed, the answers will
appear in a separate chapter or section elsewhere in the document (you
determine where they appear).
Ans.sty allows several variations. In the current release, you can use
article.sty or style files derived from article.sty and have exercises in
a subsection at the end of each section; or you can use book.sty and have
exercises at the end of each section or at the end of each chapter. I hope to
have a version that allows exercises interspersed throughout the document
(as in The TEXbook) in a later version.
This document is written using article.sty. Below are some exercises.
The ones that are marked with a dot have answers on page 9. Some of those
not marked with a dot have answers in the booklet called “Solutions to
exercises not answered in text” that is generated with this article. Later in
the document you will find more elaborate exercises along with their source.
∗
Copyright 2009
c by Charles Frederick Wells

1
1.1 Exercises

1.• This the first exercise of section 1.

2.• This is the second exercise of section 1.
3. This has an answer in the Solution Manual.

2 Using ans.sty
2.1 At the beginning of the document
The beginning of your document should look like this:

\documentstyle[ans]{article}
\makeanswers\artsec %% Use \bkchap or \bksec in book style
%% Other preamble commands you might want here
\begin{document}

If you want a booklet printed with answers to exercises not answered in the
article, you should also put \makesolutions in the preamble.

2.1.1 Options
One of the options commands must come after \makeanswers. The options
commands are

\artsec This is used in article style. It allows (no more than one) subsection
of exercises in each section.

\artscattered Not currently implemented. For article style. Al-

lows exercises to be interspersed throughout the document, as in The
TEXbook.

\once This must be used in article style and allows just one section of
exercises for the whole document. See 2.1.2 below. You cannot make
a solution manual in this style. The file onceexam.tex contains an
example of its use.

\bkchap Used with book.sty, allowing one section of exercises per chapter.

\bksec Used with book.sty, allowing one section of exercises per section.
\bkscattered Not currently implemented. Like \artscattered for
book.sty.

If you omit the \makeanswers command, the document will compose

without complaint but the answers won’t appear at the end. This may be
useful for draft purposes.
If you include \makeanswers, the option command is mandatory. If you
omit it, you will get an error message the first time you include an exercise.

2.1.2 Using \once

This option is for documents with just one section of exercises. It may be
useful for class handouts whose answers are printed separately to be handed
out later.
It is used a little differently from the others. In the other options,
\exercises puts a section or subsection heading on each section of ex-
ercises and writes the appropriate heading for the answers to that set to the
answer file. In this option, \exercises does neither. You must write the
title of the exercise section if you want one, and you must write the title of
the answer section, putting in a page break and setting the page number to
1 if that is what you want. The document “onceexam.tex” illustrates the
use of the \once option.

2.2 To print the answers

At the place in the document where you want the answers printed, put

\doanswers

You can put this any place after the last batch of exercises. This will
produce an unnumbered section titled “Solutions”, followed by the solutions
to the problems in each section. (The \once option will not produce a section
title, although it will print the answers.) When using book.sty, the section
of answers will be formatted as an unnumbered chapter, therefore starting
on a new page. In article.sty, the answer section will not start on a new
page. If you want it to, type \newpage before \doanswers. If you want the
page numbers to start over, type

\newpage
\setcounter{page}{1}
 You could then bind the answer section as a separate document.
The command \dosolutions prints the answers you wrote to exercises
that are not marked as having answers. Normally, you would set the page
counter to 1 as above before invoking \dosolutions. This article does this,
as you can see by examining the source code.

2.3 Entering the exercises

2.3.1 The exercise header
A subsection with exercises begins with the command \exercises and ends
with \eexer. If the subsection has only one exercise, you can use \exercise.
The word \exercises produces a subsection in the same format as other
subsections, headed with the word “Exercises”. There should be at most one
exercise subsection for each section of the document.

2.3.2 The exercises

Each exercise is preceded by the word \exer if you are not going to answer
it, and by \exera if you are going to answer it. You can mix answered and
unanswered exercises in any way you wish; the numbering will be correct
in the answer section. Exercises with answers will be marked like this• .
You can change the answer mark by putting a command such as \ in the
preamble.

2.3.3 The answers

Warning: The answers must be entered in exactly the way spelled
out here. This aspect of ans.sty is very user-unfriendly. Deviation
will result in answers appearing in the text or part of the next
problem appearing in the answer.
The answer should start immediately after the exercise without a blank
line intervening, preceded by the word \answer. You can type anything you
want in the answer, subject to the following three requirements:

• The answer should start on the same line as the command

\answer.

• The answer should contain no blank lines.

• The answer should be followed by at least one blank line.

 If you want more than one paragraph in an answer, insert the command
\par at the end of each paragraph except the last.
The reason for these requirements is that the program uses the blank
line to delimit the answers (using an idea of Donald Knuth’s).

2.3.4 Subexercises
To write an exercise with subexercises, start the exercise with \exer or
\exera, and then introduce each subexercise with \subexer or \subexera.
You can mix answered and nonanswered subexercises as you wish.
If the exercise begins with a subexercise without any preceding text,
it should begin “\exer\immsubexer” (either may be followed by an “a”).
The remaining subexercises are labeled \subexer or \subexera as before.
The answer to a subexercise beginning with \immsubexer should be labeled
\immsubanswer. The use of \immsubexer(a) and \immsubanswer keeps the
spacing straight (although the current version, May 24, 2009, still doesn’t
get the spacing right when the exercise has a double-digit number).
I apologize for the necessity of using \immsubexer and \immsubanswer,
but it seems quite complicated to create a version that knows whether the
exercise has any beginning text or not.

2.3.5 Problems with special marks

To mark an exercise hard, type

\exer\annot{hard}

In general, you can annotate a problem with any sort of remark in this
way.

2.4 Error messages

If you type \exera for an exercise but don’t give it an answer, you will get
an error message. Likewise if you give an exercise an answer but headed it
with \exer. Neither error stops the document from composing, and if you
have given an exercise headed \exer an answer, the answer will be printed
in the correct place with the correct number, but the spacing in the exercise
section may be wrong.
If you use \exer(a) when you should have used \immsubexer(a) you
will not get an error message; the spacing will merely be wrong.
2.5 Sample exercises
This section ends with a set of exercises illustrating all these points. The
next section has a few, too, so you can see how the answer section handled
the answers to different sections.
The answers to this section were entered as illustrated below. If you
removed the percent signs from in front of the exercises that are commented
out and compose this document again, you can see how the error messages
work.
This example also illustrates the use of the \exhead command, which
allows you to insert instructions for doing the next several exercises.

\exercises
\exera This the first exercise of section~\ref{seca}.
\answer{This is the answer to the first exercise of
section~\ref{seca}.}

\exera This is the second exercise of section~\ref{seca}.

\answer This is the answer to the second exercise of
section~\ref{seca}.

\exer This exercise has no answer.

% \exera This exercise tests an error message.

% It is marked to
% have an answer, but does not.

% \exer This exercise tests an error message too.

% \answer This should not be here.

\exhead{This header applies to Exercises~\ref{firste}

through~\ref{laste}.}

\exera\annot{hard}\label{firste} Yet another

exercise with an answer.
\answer This is yet another answer.
It is longer than the
others, and illustrates how you can
have more than one
paragraph.\par
This is the second paragraph.

\exer\annot{hard} This is an exercise with subexercises.

\subexera First subexercise.
\subanswer Answer to first subexercise.

\subexer Second subexercise.

\subexera Third subexercise.

\subanswer Answer to third subexercise.

\exer\label{laste}\immsubexera This
is the first subexercise of an exercise
that has no text before the subexercises.
\immsubanswer This is an answer.

\subexera Another subexercise.

\subanswer Another answer.

\exer\label{solans} This exercise has an answer

in the Solution Manual.
\solution Answer to Exercise~\ref{solans} on
page~\pageref{solans}.

\eexer

2.6 Exercises

1.• This the first exercise of section2.

2.• This is the second exercise of section 2.
3. This exercise has no answer.

This header applies to Exercises 4 through 6.

4.• (hard) Yet another exercise with an answer.
5. (hard) This is an exercise with subexercises.
a.• First subexercise.
b. Second subexercise.
c.• Third subexercise.
6. a.• This is the first subexercise of an exercise that has no text before the
subexercises.
b.• Another subexercise.
7. This exercise has an answer in the Solution Manual.

3 Bugs
3.1 Answers appearing in the text
or text appearing in the answers
If you enter an exercise and answer like this

\exera This is an exercise.

\answer
I did this wrong.

the answer will appear in the text instead of in the answer section. The
point is that the answer must start on the same line as the word \answer.
If you do this

\exera This is an exercise.

\answer I did this wrong too.
\exera This exercise will disappear.
\answer Here is an answer.

the second exercise will wind up as part of the answer to the first exercise,
because a blank line must follow the answer. Reread Section 2.3.3 carefully.

3.2 Spaces between carriage returns

Most text editors allow you to type return (“enter” on some computers),
one or more spaces, then return. TEX will not interpret the result as a blank
line for the purposes of ending answers. The file has to contain two returns
in a row without any intervening spaces. If in your printout you discover
than an answer has swallowed the following exercise (or more), this may be
the reason. Blanks are inserted between returns by some word processors or
editors, and sometimes (apparently) by e-mail systems.
Many text editors allow you to detect blanks because the cursor changes
shape on a blank. Your editor may allow you to search for the sequence car-
riage return, blank(s), carriage return, and change such sequences globally
to carriage return, carriage return.

4 Customizing
If you look in the file ans.sty, you will discover numerous hints for cus-
tomizing the file.

4.1 Headings
The headings put on the answer section and on the solutions booklet are de-
termined by the option, \artsec, \bkchap, etc. and can easily be changed.

4.2 Other style files

Ans.sty will very likely work with many other style files besides the standard
article.sty, but of course I can’t guarantee this. Since \exersection uses
\subsection, a different style file with a different definition of subsection
will place the exercise header in the same style as the other subsections.

4.3 Exercises

1.• Prove that for any integer n > 2 there are no nonzero integers x, y and
z for which xn + y n = z n .
2. An exercise without an answer.
3.• The very last exercise.

Answers to selected exercises

Section 1
1. This is the answer to the first exercise of section 1.
2. This is the answer to the second exercise of section 1.
Section 2
1. This is the answer to the first exercise of section 2.
2. This is the answer to the second exercise of section 2.
4. This is yet another answer. It is longer than the others, and illustrates
how you can have more than one paragraph.
This is the second paragraph.
5. a. Answer to first subexercise.
c. Answer to third subexercise.
6. a. This is an answer.
b. Another answer.

Section 4
1. If I knew how to do \marginpar in LATEX I would have written it in the
margin. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
3. The very last answer.
Solutions to exercises
not answered in text

Section 1
3. This is an answer in the Solution Manual.

Section 2
7. Answer to Exercise 7 on page 8.

Section 4