# Define strange operators

How can I render the connected sum of $n$ topological spaces (or other quite strange topological operations) in a "product-like" manner? What I'm looking for is writing, for example $${\Large{*}}_{i=1}^n G_i$$ for the free product of n groups. How can I render this with the # operation in topological spaces? (Yes, I'm studying Hatcher's AT...)

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you'd probably get better answers if you ask over at tex.stackexchange.com –  Willie Wong Nov 7 '10 at 12:27
The Wikipedia article uses \bigvee. –  Qiaochu Yuan Nov 7 '10 at 12:50
I posted also in tex.stackexchange... Sorry for the bad question. Bigvee is already assigned to the wedge sum, very different from connected sum (I made a mistake in writing before) –  tetrapharmakon Nov 7 '10 at 12:55
Why not just do $\#_{i=1}^n X_i$'? –  Grumpy Parsnip Nov 7 '10 at 13:18
P.S. $\#$ is an operation on manifolds, not arbitrary topological spaces. –  Grumpy Parsnip Nov 7 '10 at 14:00

The \mathop{..}` command from amsmath makes its argument behave like a "large operator".