LaTex table numbering

Question

How could I number the tables in my article chapter based ? So I want all the tables in the fifth section to be numbered like "Table 5.1", ..., "Table 5.n".

I tried

\usepackage{chngcntr}

\counterwithin{figure}{section}

\counterwithin{table}{section}

\counterwithin{equation}{section}

but I am having some problems (missing package I guess).

However, I need a simpler solution, without the need to use such packages.

Answer 1

The article class doesn't have chapters. Try the book or report classes - you'll find that the tables and figures are automatically numbered according to chapter.

Answer 2

Here is a solution without the use of any package (courtesy of "The Latex Companion", A1.4):

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\thetable}{\thesection.\@arabic\c@table}
\@addtoreset{table}{section}
\makeatother

This resets the table counter whenever a new section is started, and formats it as sectionno.tableno instead of just tableno . You can change the figure and equation counters similarly.

If you are using the amsmath package (or an AMS class like amsart that loads it automatically), you can use

\numberwithin{table}{section}

This was created for equations, but works for any pair of counters though supposedly there might be tricky situations that it does not handle well.