Is there any reason to define a zero-argument macro using a starred defining command?

Question

Is there any reason to define a 0-argument (read: zero-argument) macro with a starred command (\newcommand* instead of \newcommand or \DeclareRobustCommand* instead of \DeclareRobustCommand)? After all, if there are no arguments, there is nothing to verify about them.

One reason to use a starred version could be consistency in the appearance of one's own LaTeX code. A reason against could be if starred variants are slower, but I don't know whether this is the case.

(This has nothing to do with the choice of starredness - \somemacro of \somemacro* - which one is defining (and how to do the latter is btw not obvious, though it's definitely possible). This is about whether the definition of \somemacro should be performed using a starred or unstarred defining command.)

Answer 1

Be consistent, that's all. In many occasions, parameterless macros are used as "containers"; suppose you have such a container that stores some particular string you want to compare input with:

\newcommand{\fixed}{foobar}

and then you have a complicated macro taking an argument that you want to compare with \fixed:

\newcommand{\complicated}[1]{%
  ...
  \def\test{#1}%
  \ifx\test\fixed
    %% the user called \complicated{foobar}
    <do something>
  \else
    <do something else>
  \fi
  ...
}

the \ifx comparison will return "false" even if the call is \complicated{foobar}. Why? Because \fixed is \long, while \test isn't (this is actually an issue with some tests for font attributes using the macros in the LaTeX kernel). How to solve the issue? Using \long\def\test or saying

\newcommand{\test}{} % initialization (this line is necessary)

just after \newcommand{\fixed}{foobar} and using \renewcommand{\test}{#1} in the definition of \complicated.

If you don't use a parameterless macro in this way there's no practical difference between \newcommand{\foo}{bar} and \newcommand*{\foo}{bar}: the former will only occupy a tiny bit more of memory, because TeX has to store the \long flag.

Answer 2

As we can fool the compiler as follows,

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newcommand*\accept[1]{#1}
\begin{document}
\accept{\lipsum[1-3]}
\end{document}

Does starred version matter? :-)