Applying a postaction to every path in TikZ

Question

Sometime, for example in a solution to a recent question, one wants to apply a postaction (like a decoration) to a group of paths. A naive solution is to use every path/.style={}. Unfortunately this also this then applies the postaction to every path drawn in the postaction, leading to an infinite regress.

Is there any way to avoid this?

A somewhat stupid minimal example of the problem:

\begin{tikzpicture}[every path/.style={postaction={draw}}]
    \draw (0,0)--(1,0);
\end{tikzpicture}

with error message

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [grouping levels=255].
\pgfutil@g@addto@macro #1#2->\begingroup 
                                         \toks@ \expandafter {#1#2}\xdef #1{...
l.12     \draw (0,0)--(1,0);

Answer 1

Please check if the following solves your problem, in particular with regard to scoping, this seems far too easy. nomorepostactions is intended to locally empty out the postactions, so they don't get applied after that.

It did fix your toy problem.

\makeatletter
\tikzset{nomorepostaction/.code=\let\tikz@postactions\pgfutil@empty}
\makeatother
[...]
\begin{tikzpicture}[every path/.style={postaction={nomorepostaction,draw}}]
    \draw (0,0)--(1,0);
\end{tikzpicture}

Answer 2

Maybe this answer on "How to draw an arrow in the middle of the line?" might help you. This way you do not run into a recursion.

Answer 3

(Not an answer.)

Usually one can override properties, but is there a way to remove 'postaction' completely? I mean, there should be a way to write something like [every path/.style={postaction={nopostaction}},nopostaction/.style={draw, <some way to override postaction option>}], probably.

(Related: Is it possible to clear tikz/pgf options?)