# LaTeX/Counters

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Counters are an essential part of LaTeX: they allow you to control the numbering mechanism of everything (sections, lists, captions, etc.).

## Counter manipulation

In LaTeX it is fairly easy to create new counters and even counters that reset automatically when another counter is increased (think subsection in a section for example). With the command

 \newcounter{NameOfTheNewCounter}

you create a new counter that is automatically set to zero. If you want the counter to be reset to zero every time another counter is increased, use:

 \newcounter{NameOfTheNewCounter}[NameOfTheOtherCounter]

To increase the counter, either use

 \stepcounter{NameOfTheNewCounter}

or

 \refstepcounter{NameOfTheNewCounter} % used for labels and cross referencing

or

here the number can also be negative. For automatic resetting you need to use `\stepcounter`.

To set the counter value explicitly, use

 \setcounter{NameOfTheNewCounter}{number}

## Counter access

• \theNameOfTheNewCounter will print the formatted string related to the counter (note the "the" before the actual name of the counter).
• \value{NameOfTheNewCounter} will return the counter value which can be used by other counters or for calculations. It is not a formatted string, so it cannot be used in text.
• \arabic{NameOfTheNewCounter} will print the formatted counter using arabic numbers.

Note that \arabic{NameOfTheNewCounter} may be used as a value too, but not the others.

Strangely enough, LaTeX counters are not introduced by a backslash in any case, even with the \the command. plainTeX equivalents \count and \newcounter\mycounter do abide by the backslash rule.

## Counter style

Each counter also has a default format that dictates how it is displayed whenever LaTeX needs to print it. Such formats are specified using internal LaTeX commands:

Command Example
\arabic 1, 2, 3 ...
\alph a, b, c ...
\Alph A, B, C ...
\roman i, ii, iii ...
\Roman I, II, III ...
\fnsymbol Aimed at footnotes; prints a sequence of symbols.

## LaTeX default counters

• part
• chapter
• section
• subsection
• subsubsection
• paragraph
• subparagraph
• page
• equation
• figure
• table
• footnote
• mpfootnote

For the enumerate environment:

• enumi
• enumii
• enumiii
• enumiv

## Book with parts, sections, but no chapters

Here follows an example where we want to use parts and sections, but no chapters in the book class :

 \renewcommand{\thesection}{\thepart .\arabic{section}} \part{My Part} \section{My Section} \subsection{My Subsection}

## Custom enumerate

See the List Structures chapter.

## Custom sectioning

Here is an example for recreating something similar to a section and subsection counter that already exist in LaTeX:

 \newcounter{mysection} \newcounter{mysubsection}[mysection] \addtocounter{mysection}{2} % set them to some other numbers than 0 \addtocounter{mysubsection}{10} % same % \arabic{mysection}.\arabic{mysubsection} Blah blah \stepcounter{mysection} \arabic{mysection}.\arabic{mysubsection} Blah blah \stepcounter{mysubsection} \arabic{mysection}.\arabic{mysubsection} Blah blah \addtocounter{mysubsection}{25} \arabic{mysection}.\arabic{mysubsection} Blah blah and more blah blah