> I'm pretty certain you could write a TeX macro to do that. This should do the trick: \def\replicate#1#2{\ifnum#1>0 #2% \expandafter\replicate\expandafter{\number\numexpr#1-1}{#2}\fi} Used as \replicate{4}{l}. I found this snippet - written by David Kastrup - in "Pearls of TEX Programming" (2005). Christian