\the-
commandsWhenever you request a new LaTeX counter, LaTeX creates a bunch of behind-the-scenes commands, as well as definining 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 ("-
- nnn -
-
"). Would you want to
achieve this by redefining \thepage
, given the likely appearance
of the table of contents with the dashes attached every page number,
or of the modified \pageref
references. In this case, the
modification is best done by redefining the page style itself, perhaps
with
package fancyhdr.
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=the-commands