Empty document, only pagenumber, 500 pages needed

Question

I need a document with 500 empty pages, only the pagenumbering in the foot of the page.

This MWE shows 2 pages in the way I'd like to get all 500:

\documentclass[pagenumber=footright, DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\ihead{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}
\chead{}
\cfoot[]{}
\ohead{}



\begin{document}
\mbox{}


\newpage

\mbox{}
\newpage



\end{document}

Can somebody write e.g. a loop for 500 pages? Cave: the \mbox{} is necessary, otherwise there is no pagenumber or even a PDF of 0 pages...

(The purpose is to add pagenumbers to an already printed document: I'll put the 500 pages again into the printer and thus get a printed document with pagenumbers. I'm trying to help a poor guy here who otherwise had to write the pagenumbers manually into 40 folders à 500 pages.)

Answer 1

Use a primitive \loop with \repeat and \unless testing.

\documentclass[pagenumber=footright, DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\ihead{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}
\chead{}
\cfoot[]{}
\ohead{}


\newcounter{loopcntr}

\begin{document}
\loop\unless\ifnum\value{loopcntr}=500
\mbox{}
\newpage
\stepcounter{loopcntr}% Advance the counter
\repeat

\end{document}

Here's a variant with pgffor and forloop packages:

\documentclass[pagenumber=footright, DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\ihead{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}
\chead{}
\cfoot[]{}
\ohead{}

\usepackage{pgffor}
\usepackage{forloop}

\newcounter{loopcntr}

\begin{document}

\foreach \x in {1,...,500} {%
\mbox{}
\newpage
}

\forloop{loopcntr}{1}{\value{loopcntr} < 501}{%
\mbox{}
\newpage
}


\end{document}

Answer 2

\documentclass[pagenumber=footright, DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\ihead{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}
\chead{}
\cfoot[]{}
\ohead{}



\begin{document}


\def\x{\ifnum\value{page}<501\mbox{}\clearpage\expandafter\x\fi}
\x

\end{document}

Answer 3

A variant with package multido (50 bytes):

\documentclass[DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\cfoot{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}

\usepackage{multido}

\begin{document}

\multido{}{500}{\null\newpage}

\end{document}

Answer 4

With expl3:

\documentclass[pagenumber=footright, DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\usepackage{expl3}

\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\ihead{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}
\chead{}
\cfoot[]{}
\ohead{}

\begin{document}

\ExplSyntaxOn
\prg_replicate:nn { 500 } { \mbox{}\newpage }
\ExplSyntaxOff

\end{document}

---

With no package and no assignment, but with e-TeX:

\documentclass[pagenumber=footright, DIV=20, fontsize=16]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}

\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\ihead{}
\ofoot[\pagemark]{\pagemark}
\chead{}
\cfoot[]{}
\ohead{}

\begin{document}

\def\x#1{%
  \ifnum#1>0
  \null\clearpage 
  \expandafter\x\expandafter{\the\numexpr#1-1\expandafter}\fi
}
\x{1}
\end{document}

With a simple variant, you can get a sequence that expands to 500 copies of \null\clearpage:

\def\x#1{%
  \ifnum#1>0
  \unexpanded{\null\clearpage}%
  \expandafter\x\expandafter{\the\numexpr#1-1\expandafter}\fi
}
\edef\fivehundredemptypages{\x{500}}

Answer 5

The following is how I'd do it. It's very similar to David Carlisle's answer, but in a way which makes the recursion slightly clearer to me (trying to remember how \expandafter works always gives me a headache!).

\begin{document}

\def\x{\ifnum \count0>500
    \let\next\relax
  \else
    \null\clearpage
    \let\next\x
  \fi
  \next}
\x

\end{document}

Also Knuth explicitly guarantees that this is tail-recursive (though I don't doubt that the \expandafter one is, too).