Redefining counters’ \the-commands

Whenever you request a new LaTeX counter, LaTeX creates a bunch of behind-the-scenes commands, as well as defining the counter itself.

Among other things, \newcounter{<fred>} creates a command \the<fred>, which expands to “the value of <fred>” when you’re typesetting.

The definition of \the<fred> should express the value of the counter: it is almost always always a mistake to use the command to produce anything else. The value may reasonably be expressed as an arabic, a roman or a greek number, as an alphabetic expression, or even as a sequence (or pattern of) symbols. If you need a decision process on whether to re-define \the<fred>, consider what might happen when you do so.

So, for example, if you want your section numbers to be terminated by a period, you could make \thesection expand with a terminating period. However, such a change to \thesection makes the definition of \thesubsection look distinctly odd: you are going to find yourself redefining things left, right and centre. Rather, use the standard techniques for adjusting the presentation of section numbers.

Or, suppose you want the page number to appear at the bottom of each page surrounded by dashes (as in “---~nnn~---”). If you try to achieve this by redefining \thepage, problems will arise from the use of the page number in the table of contents (each number will have the dashes attached), and \pageref references will be oddly modified. In this case, the change of appearance is best done by redefining the page style itself, perhaps using package fancyhdr.

FAQ ID: Q-the-commands