# [texhax] Reverse page numbering (begin with the last page number and end with 0)

Othmane Benkirane eo at rhyhann.net
Sun Jan 3 21:13:15 CET 2010

```Sorry, in fact I want the result of \pageref{LastPage} - \thepage to be written in the headers (it should begin with \pageref{LastPage} - 1 and should finish with 0). My mistake.

Regards,
Othmane Benkirane.
Le 2 janv. 2010 à 01:38, Reinhard Kotucha a écrit :

> On 31 December 2009 Othmane Benkirane wrote:
>
>> The subject explains everything: I want to start the page numbering
>> from the last page number and decrement it until it's 0 (for the
>> last page). A mathematical operation for this would be: \thepage -
>> \pageref{LastPage}, but how to include it in fancyhdr (for a book
>> class) ?
>
> \thepage - \pageref{LastPage} gives negative page numbers.  If this is
> ok for you, try, for instance, \setcounter{page}{-123} in the
> preamble.
>
> Don't rely on \pageref{LastPage}.  Its value depends on the initial
> setting of the page counter and you'll get different results after
> each run.
>
> If you want to determine the number of pages of your document
> automatically, then you should create a dedicated counter yourself.
> You probably can can increase it using \everyshipout from the everyshi
> package and finally write the number to a file.  I didn't test it.
>
> If you are familiar with a programming language, you could simply
> evaluate the log file and search for the line
>
>  "Output written on foo.pdf (123 pages, 123456 bytes)"
>
> and create a file which contains the string "\setcounter{page}{-123}".
> You then have to \input the file in the preamble.
>
> But in most cases it should be sufficient to initialize the page counter
> manually.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard
>
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