Is there a general way to work around the 9-argument limit of \newcommand?

Asked Jun 16 '23 at 18:08

Active Jun 16 '23 at 19:31

Viewed 114 times

I wish to define a command with many arguments, possibly upwards of fifty. Why is there a limit of nine arguments? Is there a general way of working around this limitation?

asked Jun 16 '23 at 18:08

Noah J

2

No, the 9-argument limit is imposed by TeX. In TeX, #42 is "argument 4 + the character 2". You can find some ideas on how to work around that here, but neither is a really good solution. As a rule of thumb, if you're using more than nine arguments you are doing something wrong – Phelype Oleinik Jun 16 '23 at 18:11
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@PhelypeOleinik I would say more than 5 is already quite dubious ;-) – Ulrike Fischer Jun 16 '23 at 18:12
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I will complete the comment on the fact you can use for example one argument made of ten values separated by comma, and in this case this can be useful and not weird. LaTeX3 eases the use of that kind of coma separated values. – projetmbc Jun 16 '23 at 18:18
I think one can have a few more in luametatex, but is it really needed? – mickep Jun 16 '23 at 18:21
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@mickep The subtle difference of "can" and "should" :-) – Phelype Oleinik Jun 16 '23 at 18:22
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Related/duplicate: How to define a command that takes more than 9 arguments – Werner Jun 16 '23 at 18:25
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you surely don't want 50 parameters specified by position??? use a single argument with a comma list {a,b,c,d} or with named arguments {foo=a,font=b,rabbit=wibble,...} – David Carlisle Jun 16 '23 at 18:47
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I second @DavidCarlisle's suggestion of named arguments (key=value arguments). You can find plenty of suggestions for this on the site if you search for key=value arguments or key-value (that's the related tag). – Skillmon Jun 16 '23 at 18:50
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Can you give a sensible case where a command with 20 arguments would be useful? – egreg Jun 16 '23 at 20:55

Is there a general way to work around the 9-argument limit of \newcommand?

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