Working alternatives to totcount to get the total number of pages of a document

Question

I have encountered a bug in totcount package: sometimes it counts pages incorrectly. For example, the following code produces for me a 2-page PDF file, but totcount thinks there is only one page:

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage{totcount}
\regtotcounter{page}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

{\LARGE Total page count according to \texttt{totcount}: \total{page}.}

\end{document}

Is anybody still maintaining this package?

What are working alternatives to totcount?

I know about lastpage but I need the total number in numerical form, not as text. With totcount I use \totvalue{page} for this.

Answer 1

You can use zref that shouldn't have problems like totcount with respect to the page number. I mean, totcount is great for saving the value of counters, but it can fail with page.

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

\usepackage[lastpage]{zref}

\usepackage{lipsum} % for the example

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\totalpages}{\zref@extractdefault{LastPage}{page}{0}}
\makeatother

\newcounter{test}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

\bigskip

\LARGE

\setcounter{test}{\totalpages}\thetest

Total page count according to \texttt{zref}: \totalpages.

\end{document}

As you see, you can use \totalpages also in context where a number is expected.

Answer 2

lastpage returns 2 as you want here

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage{lastpage}


\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

{\LARGE Total page count according to \texttt{lastpage}: \pageref{LastPage}.}

\end{document}

You can use the value of \pageref{LastPage} as a number if you are careful.

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

\makeatletter
\long\def\@secondoffour#1#2#3#4{#2}
\def\getlastpage{\ifx\r@LastPage\@undefined 0\else
\expandafter\@secondoffour\r@LastPage\@empty\@empty\fi}
\makeatother

\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage{lastpage}


\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

{\LARGE Total page count according to \texttt{lastpage}: \pageref{LastPage}.}

\the\numexpr\getlastpage+5\relax

\end{document}

Answer 3

You can do this "by hand" using the \AtEndDocument command from the etoolbox package. The code below increments the equation counter at the end of the document and then creates LastPage label. With this in place \pageref{LastPage} will give the number of pages in the document (of course, you need to latex twice and the number of pages needs to be stable.

Here is the top few lines of the output from the MWE:

Here is the code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{etoolbox}% setting the LastPage label
\AtEndDocument{\refstepcounter{equation}\label{LastPage}}

\usepackage{blindtext}% for illustrative purposes only below

\begin{document}

The number of pages in this document is \pageref{LastPage}.

\Blinddocument% a fake random document

\end{document}