Reference to longtable wrong if \numberwithin{table}{section} is activated

Question

I've encountered something weird while using the longtable package together with \numberwithin{table}{section} or \counterwithin{table}{section}: if a longtable is the first table in a section, it will not be referenced correctly (with \ref{}); instead the reference will point to the last first-in-a-section longtable in the document. Note that the error is carried forward to other packages which rely on longtable such as tabu (longtabu).

While searching for a solution, I found duplicate entries for the first-in-a-section longtables in the aux-file, which is why I am suspecting this to be a bug. However, my LaTeX knowledge is limited and I am happy to be proven wrong.

Here's my MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath} 
\numberwithin{table}{section}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}

\begin{document}
Reference to Table \ref{tab:Label1}\\
Reference to Table \ref{tab:Label2}\\

\clearpage
\section{}

\begin{longtable}{ll}
\caption{Caption.}
\label{tab:Label1}\\
\toprule 
\multicolumn{2}{l}{\textbf{Header}}  \\
\midrule 
\endfirsthead
\multicolumn{2}{c}{\begin{footnotesize}\tablename\ \thetable\ -- \textit{Continued from previous page}\end{footnotesize}} \\
\toprule
\multicolumn{2}{l}{\textbf{Header}}  \\
\midrule
\endhead
\bottomrule
\multicolumn{2}{r}{\begin{footnotesize}\textit{Continued on next page}\end{footnotesize}} \\
\endfoot
\bottomrule
\endlastfoot
some variable & some explaination\\
\midrule
some variable & some explaination \\
\end{longtable}

\clearpage
\section{}

\begin{longtable}{ll}
\caption{Caption.}
\label{tab:Label2}\\
\toprule 
\multicolumn{2}{l}{\textbf{Header}}  \\
\midrule 
\endfirsthead
\multicolumn{2}{c}{\begin{footnotesize}\tablename\ \thetable\ -- \textit{Continued from previous page}\end{footnotesize}} \\
\toprule
\multicolumn{2}{l}{\textbf{Header}}  \\
\midrule
\endhead
\bottomrule
\multicolumn{2}{r}{\begin{footnotesize}\textit{Continued on next page}\end{footnotesize}} \\
\endfoot
\bottomrule
\endlastfoot
some variable & some explanation\\
\midrule
some variable & some explanation \\
\end{longtable}

\end{document}

On my computer, both references point to the latter table.

• Do your computers replicate the error?
• Does anybody have an idea what could cause this error?
• Would anybody know a workaround?

Answer 1

As a general rule, settings should be made after loading packages (there are some exceptions); this is a case: since hyperref modifies the macros that manage counters, your \numberwithin given before the package is loaded leads to the issue.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}

\numberwithin{table}{section}