Most used TeX macros

This is an analysis of the most popular macros in (La)TeX files.

It's intended to help LaTeX editor developers in choosing the macros for which to provide shortcuts. This results in several choices which would be odd in a full LaTeX parser:

• Macros that consist of a backslash and single symbol (e.g. \[) are skipped as they're easy to type anyway.
• \left(, \right\}, etc. are considered to be a single macro.
• \begin{name} is special-cased but \end{name} is not so that we can see both the popularity of particular environments as well as environment blocks in general.

How to use

Dependencies

The Python program requires the requests and github modules. On Debian-based systems, you can install them with:

sudo apt install python3-requests python3-github

In addition, the Haskell program requires the stack binary, available at haskellstack.org.

Running

First, download the top N most starred TeX GitHub repositories to the repos directory:

./download.py --n-repos=500 --token=<your GitHub token>

(--token is optional but recommended because authenticated users have higher rate limits.)

Then, analyze the code:

./analyze.hs > results.txt

Results

As of 2021-03-15, the top 200 results are:

\end
\item
\mathcal
\to
\ref
\label
\texttt
\in
\frac
\mathbf
\node
\def
\draw
\tcode
\emph
\text
\times
\subsection
\textbf
\pdfglyphtounicode
\alpha
\usepackage
\section
\meta
\index
\path
\mathfrak
\begin{itemize}
\ldots
\ar
\includegraphics
\fi
\noindent
\code
\sum
\otimes
\newcommand
\expandafter
\begin{proof}
\pgfpoint
\textwidth
\pi
\subsubsection
\lambda
\subset
\caption
\tt
\verb
\bullet
\cite
\NormalTok
\pgf@y
\centering
\pgf@x
\varphi
\theta
\begin{enumerate}
\hline
\mu
\partial
\begin{codeexample}
\circ
\ctikzvalof
\sigma
\textit
\l
\leq
\gls
\begin{lstlisting}
\cs
\begin{frame}
\begin{lemma}
\cdot
\phi
\else
\int
\color
\begin
\begin{figure}
\beta
\let
\pnum
\right)
\left(
\lstinline
\endcsname
\csname
\quad
\begin{tikzpicture}
\delta
\infty
\sh
\Gamma
\PYG
\gamma
\Spec
\geq
\medskip
\vspace
\relax
\ctikzset
\anchor
\hat
\d
\psi
\marg
\small
\begin{center}
\overline
\paragraph
\exp
\pgf@circ@res@step
\bf
\x
\li
\omega
\Omega
\input
\cap
\log
\begin{verbatim}
\pgfpathlineto
\kappa
\Delta
\sqrt
\it
\pgf@circ@res@up
\cdots
\multicolumn
\rho
\begin{equation}
\footnote
\frametitle
\tau
\xi
\begin{tabular}
\documentclass
\epsilon
\advance
\begin{document}
\definecolor
\textcolor
\pgf@circ@res@left
\begin{key}
\wedge
\par
\em
\the
\dots
\tikz
\usetikzlibrary
\url
\pgfmathresult
\pgfpathmoveto
\rule
\bar
\tilde
\textsubscript
\ell
\cref
\mathrm
\pgf@circ@res@right
\LaTeX
\href
\TeX
\footnotesize
\edef
\ifx
\mat
\State
\vec
\nabla
\protect
\longrightarrow
\varepsilon
\Lambda
\R
\oplus
\mid
\mapsto
\pgfusepath
\hspace
\linewidth
\nu
\foreach
\setlength
\cup
\eta
\begin{minipage}
\dim
\mathbb
\renewcommand
\eqref
\co
\subseteq
\cmd
\hypertarget
\xymatrix
\Hom
\scriptsize