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I sometimes use the alignat* environment in the following way:

\begin{alignat*}{99}
   a & lot & of & ampersand & symbols & that & I \\
   do & not & really & want & to & count
\end{alignat*}

I understand that the number after \begin{alignat*} is supposed to be 

(maxmimum number of & in a line  +  1) / 2,

but I really don't feel like counting them.

Using pdflatex this compiles fine and the output looks right to me. What are possible caveats of doing this, or is this even common practice? Is the answer different for the non-starred version?

Wauzl
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    Related/duplicate: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/96124/what-is-the-mandatory-argument-of-alignedat-for – egreg Oct 22 '15 at 19:47

1 Answers1

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one possible downside of using such a large value as 99 for alignat* is that it may slow down processing, but these days that's not such a big deal. however, i can't think of any situation in which nearly 200 segments could possibly fit in the allowed width of a page. even 25 should be adequate.

in regard to the non-starred version, that only adds an equation number. the argument identifying number of segments is treated exactly the same.

barbara beeton
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