Remove section numbering in pdf_document

Question

I am trying to knit a document using RMarkdown into a pdf document. I want to remove the section numbers by default. I thought that the number_section:FALSE would do this, but it isn't. I've stripped down to an MWE and I'm still getting section numbers.

In the knitted report.tex file, the section that I specifically label as not having a number using {-} is tagged as \section*{...}, whereas the other sections are tagged with \section{...} which is how you would accomplish numbering some sections in LaTeX, however I would like all sections to be knitted as \section*{...} without having to specify {-} in each section (or subsection).

I am using pandoc version 2.11.2, RStudio version 1.4.1103 and R version 4.0.3

Here are my source files:

report.Rmd:

---
output: 
  pdf_document:
    template: template.tex
    keep_tex: TRUE
    number_sections: FALSE
---
# Abstract {-}

# Introduction

## A Subsection

# A Second Section

template.tex:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

$body$

\end{document}

The pandoc call in the RMarkdown output is shown as (I added the newlines to make it easier to read), notice it does not include --number-sections, which is usually used to tell pandoc to enforce numbering, by default pandoc should not number them.

"C:/Program Files/RStudio/bin/pandoc/pandoc" 
+RTS -K512m -RTS report.utf8.md 
--to latex 
--from markdown+autolink_bare_uris+tex_math_single_backslash 
--output report.tex 
--lua-filter "C:\Users\MichaelBarrowman\Documents\R\R-4.0.3\library\rmarkdown\rmarkdown\lua\pagebreak.lua" 
--lua-filter "C:\Users\MichaelBarrowman\Documents\R\R-4.0.3\library\rmarkdown\rmarkdown\lua\latex-div.lua" 
--self-contained
--template template.tex 
--highlight-style tango 
--pdf-engine pdflatex 

This knits to the following report.tex file:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\hypertarget{abstract}{%
\section*{Abstract}\label{abstract}}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Abstract}

\hypertarget{introduction}{%
\section{Introduction}\label{introduction}}

\hypertarget{a-subsection}{%
\subsection{A Subsection}\label{a-subsection}}

\hypertarget{a-second-section}{%
\section{A Second Section}\label{a-second-section}}

\end{document}

Which is rendered as report.pdf and looks like this:

Answer 1

Your problem here seems to be that you're using a custom LaTeX template, but haven't put anything into that template to deal with turning section numbering on or off. For reference, here's how the pandoc default LaTeX template handles this:

$if(numbersections)$
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{$if(secnumdepth)$$secnumdepth$$else$5$endif$}
$else$
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-\maxdimen} % remove section numbering
$endif$

(Seen on lines 306--310 here).

So, if you want to deal with this and use your own custom template, you have to handle that yourself (perhaps even just by copy-pasting what the default template does).

When I edit your template.tex like that:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{hyperref}

$if(numbersections)$
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{$if(secnumdepth)$$secnumdepth$$else$5$endif$}
$else$
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-\maxdimen} % remove section numbering
$endif$


\begin{document}

$body$

\end{document}

I get the result I think you want: