Sstrhsrtj

I am in a need of a global counter which I can be used as argument to a method. When it is used as an argument, I just want the current value of it... so what the method receives is a number, not the counter. Hope I am clear.

Do you have any advice on how to create such a setup?

Here is a example showing the problem I have where the counter is increased unintented:

documentclass{article}

usepackage{xparse}



newcounter{myCounter}



NewDocumentCommand{GetUinuqieID}{}{%

    stepcounter{myCounter}themyCounter

}



makeatletter%

% Arguments:

%  1) The text

%  2) The label

newcommand*{textlabel}[2]{%

  edef@currentlabel{#1}% Set target label

   #1phantomsectionlabel{#2}% Print and store label

}

makeatother



begin{document}



textlabel{GetUinuqieID}{DDD} % prints 1, expected

ref{DDD} % prints 2, expected 1

textlabel{GetUinuqieID}{FFF}

ref{FFF} 

textlabel{GetUinuqieID}{GGG}

ref{GGG} 

end{document}

The usual way to be able to refer back to counters is by using refstepcounter instead of counter, then the next label will automatically pick up the right value.

Something like

documentclass{article}

usepackage{xparse}

usepackage{hyperref}



newcounter{myCounter}



NewDocumentCommand{GetUinuqieID}{}{%

  refstepcounter{myCounter}themyCounter

}



makeatletter%

% Arguments:

%  1) The text

%  2) The label

newcommand*{textlabel}[2]{%

  #1label{#2}% Print and store label

}

makeatother



begin{document}



textlabel{GetUinuqieID}{DDD} % prints 1, expected

ref{DDD} % prints 2, expected 1

textlabel{GetUinuqieID}{FFF}

ref{FFF} 

textlabel{GetUinuqieID}{GGG}

ref{GGG} 

end{document}

should work and gives

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as expected.

Depending on the intended use case, this could probably be simplified a bit.

Indeed the problem with the code in the question was (amongst others) that GetUinuqieID is a robust command, which means that it did not expand to a number in edef@currentlabel. Instead the label was made out to GetUinuqieID and that command was only expanded when the label was printed in ref, which meant that at that point the counter would be incremented again, leading to

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