Counters

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Everything LaTeX numbers for you has a counter associated with it. The name of the counter is the same as the name of the environment or command that produces the number, except with no \. (enumi - enumiv are used for the nested enumerate environment.) Below is a list of the counters used in LaTeX’s standard document classes to control numbering.

      part            paragraph       figure          enumi
      chapter         subparagraph    table           enumii
      section         page            footnote        enumiii
      subsection      equation        mpfootnote      enumiv
      subsubsection

\addtocounter

Command:

    \addtocounter{counter}{value} 

The \addtocounter command increments the counter by the amount specified by the value argument. The value argument can be negative.

\alph

Command:

    \alph{counter} 
    \Alph{counter} 

This command causes the value of the counter to be printed in alphabetic characters. The \alph command causes lower case alphabetic alphabetic characters, i.e., a, b, c… while the \Alph command causes upper case alphabetic characters, i.e., A, B, C….

\arabic

Command:

    \arabic{counter} 

The \arabic command causes the value of the counter to be printed in arabic numbers, i.e., 3.

\fnsymbol

Command:

    \fnsymbol{counter} 

The \fnsymbol command causes the value of the counter to be printed in a specific sequence of nine symbols that can be used for numbering footnotes.

Note: counter must have a value between 1 and 9 inclusive.

\newcounter

Command:

    \newcounter{foo}[counter] 

The \newcounter command defines a new counter named foo. The counter is initialized to zero.

The optional argument [counter] causes the counter foo to be reset whenever the counter named in the optional argument is incremented.

\refstepcounter

Command:

    \refstepcounter{counter} 

The \refstepcounter command works like \stepcounter except it also defines the current \ref value to be the result of \thecounter.

\roman

Command:

    \roman{counter} 
    \Roman{counter} 

This command causes the value of the counter to be printed in roman numerals. The \roman command causes lower case roman numerals, i.e., i, ii, iii…, while the \Roman command causes upper case roman numerals, i.e., I, II, III….

\stepcounter

Command:

    \stepcounter{counter} 

The \stepcounter command adds one to the counter and resets all subsidiary counters.

\setcounter

Command:

    \setcounter{counter}{value} 

The \setcounter command sets the value of the counter to that specified by the value argument.

\usecounter

Command:

    \usecounter{counter} 

The \usecounter command is used in the second argument of the list environment to allow the counter specified to be used to number the list items.

\value

Command:

    \value{counter} 

The \value command produces the value of the counter named in the mandatory argument. It can be used where LaTeX expects an integer or number, such as the second argument of a \setcounter or \addtocounter command, or in:

             \hspace{\value{foo}\parindent}

It is useful for doing arithmetic with counters.

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