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Comments:     Resent-From: mjd@ams.org
Comments:     Originally-From: Michael John Downes <mjd@ams.org>
In-Reply-To:  David Carlisle's message of Tue, 07 Jul 1998 09:55:23 +0100
Date:         Tue, 7 Jul 1998 07:50:41 -0400
From: "Michael J. Downes" <mjd@AMS.ORG>
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Subject:      Re: L3PL: blank line after \usepackage
Status: R
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X-UID: 2657

For what it's worth, when writing packages and such I have acquired
the habit of putting a \relax after all the commands that have
trailing option lookahead, or the optional date if the command takes a
date:

  \ProcessOptions\relax

  \RequirePackage{latexsym}[1995/01/01]

  \LoadClass{foo}[1995/01/01]

(also \usepackage and \documentclass).

One reason is that if an error happens to occur while processing one
of these commands, \relax or [...] ensures that the error context
shown by TeX will be the line that triggered the error, not some
following line (past any comment lines that happen to follow).