Specify newcommand to provide default argument to existing command

Question

I have an existing command, defined within a \newenvironment:

\newcommand{\param}[3]{\textbf{##1} & \emph{##2} & ##3 \\ }

That command on its own works fine.

What I want to be able to do is to alias this command for typical use cases. The second argument to this command is a type, so I want something like:

\providecommand{\number}{}
\renewcommand{\number}[2]{\param{##1}{number}{##2}}

However, this gives the error: Argument of \number has an extra }.

This error appears even if the \number command is never used.

What would the cause of this be?

Answer 1

As Joseph said, redefining \number is a bad idea, It's particularly self referential here as \newcommand (and \providecommand etc) all use \number to process the [2] optional argument that specifies how many arguments the command has. This normalises away any space and TeX constructs that expand to a number and exposes the literal digit that is needed to construct the #1#2 primitive TeX \def syntax.

\long \def \@yargdef #1#2#3{%
  \ifx#2\tw@
    \def\reserved@b##11{[####1]}%
  \else
    \let\reserved@b\@gobble
  \fi
  \expandafter
    \@yargd@f \expandafter{\number #3}#1%
                           %%%%%%%
                           %%%%%%%
}