Overview

The latex_variables package provides functions to convert any numerical Python variable to a string that defines a LaTeX variable, which can be included in your LaTeX document. This avoids the need to manually type the value of the variable into the document and opens the potential to automatically update its value when the Python code that generates it is changed.

The library

Most functions are available through the latex_variables top level package. Throughout the documentation we’ll use lv as the alias for latex_variables.

import latex_variables as lv

Convert variables

We can use the latex_variables.to_latex to generate the string needed to define a LaTeX variable with the same value as the Python variable and optional units.

Let’s define some height measurement in meters and generate its corresponding LaTeX variable. We need to pass a name for it and because this magntiude has a known unit, we will also pass a value to the unit argument.

height = 30
variable = lv.to_latex(height, name="Height", unit="m")
print(variable)

Out:

\newcommand{\Height}{$30 \, \text{m}$}

Python floats might have many significant digits that are not needed to report on a LaTeX document, while a round version of it it’s sufficient to achieve the same purpose. We can specify the format of the numerical value of the variable through the fmt argument.

pressure = 101.325
variable = lv.to_latex(pressure, name="Pressure", unit="kPa", fmt=".2f")
print(variable)

Out:

\newcommand{\Pressure}{$101.33 \, \text{kPa}$}