TOC section symbol/numbering

Question

So I've come to the following problems while writing something in LaTeX, first, I want to have the numbering of a section of the output to be just a number not depending of the chapter. (not like 1.1, 1.2 etc)

i.e.

Chapter 1

1. Section 1
2. Section 2

Chapter 2

1. Section 1 in chapter 2
2. Section 2 in chapter 2

etc, but, on the TOC I want it to look like

Chapter 1

§1. Section 1
§2. Section 2

Chapter 2

§1. Section 1 in chapter 2

§2. Section 2 in chapter 2

To have the first one I used

\renewcommand{\thesection}{\thepart \arabic{section}}

with

\documentclass[leqno, 12pt, twoside,letterpaper]{book}

But I can't get the TOC with the symbol §, any help would be welcome. Thanks!

Answer 1

To have the number preceeded by the symbol § in the TOC, it suffices to to load the package tocloft and issue the command:

\renewcommand{\cftsecpresnum}{\S}

Complete MWE:

\documentclass[leqno,12pt,twoside,letterpaper]{book}

\renewcommand{\thesection}{\arabic{section}}

\usepackage{tocloft}
\renewcommand{\cftsecpresnum}{\S}

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents

\chapter{Test}
\section{Section 1}
\section{Section 2}

\chapter{Test}
\section{Section 1 in chapter 2}
\section{Section 2 in chapter 2}

\end{document} 

Output

Note that I've used

\renewcommand{\thesection}{\arabic{section}}

instead of yours

\renewcommand{\thesection}{\thepart \arabic{section}}