ref to subsection number only

Question

is there a way to reference the subsection part only? Example:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\section{This is my section}
For further information see subsection \ref{subsecthree} within this section.
\subsection{One}
\subsection{Two}
\subsection{Three}\label{subsecthree}

\end{document}

Usually gives (without the stars):

1 This is my section
For further information see subsection **1.3** within this section.

But I want:

1 This is my section
For further information see subsection **3** within this section.

Is that possible?

[Edit] To make it more clear: I am looking for a command that works like \ref, but prints (the arabic number of) the value of the subsection counter at the position of the \label.

=======================
== Solution in LaTeX ==

There is another solution below. This is a different solution I came up with
(I cannot post an answer to my own question, so I put it here):

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand{\labelsubseccounter}[1]{
    \renewcommand\thesubsection{\arabic{subsection}}
    \addtocounter{subsection}{-1}
    \refstepcounter{subsection}
    \label{#1}
    \renewcommand\thesubsection{\thesection.\arabic{subsection}}
}

\begin{document}

\section{This is my section}
For further information see subsection \ref{subsecthree} within this section, 
which is called \ref{onepointthree}, not \ref{onepointfour}.
\subsection{One}
\subsection{Two}
\subsection{Three}\label{onepointthree}\labelsubseccounter{subsecthree}
\subsection{Four}\label{onepointfour}

\end{document}

(I would like to insert the compiled code, but don't know how, sorry)

Answer 1

Related to your MWE you can use the following:

\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\def\@firstoftwo@second#1#2{%
  \def\temp##1.##2\@nil{##2}%
   \temp#1\@nil}
\newcommand\sref[1]{%
   \expandafter\@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\@firstoftwo@second{#1}%
}

\makeatother
\begin{document}
\section{This is my section}
For further information see
\begin{tabular}{ll}
 \verb+\sref{subsecone}+   & \sref{subsecone} \\
 \verb+\sref{subsectwo}+   & \sref{subsectwo} \\
 \verb+\sref{subsecthree}+ & \sref{subsecthree} \\
\end{tabular}  within this section.
\subsection{One}\label{subsecone}
\subsection{Two}\label{subsectwo}
\subsection{Three}\label{subsecthree}
\end{document}

---

Some explanation.

The standard reference are saved in the aux-file in the following form:

\newlabel{subsectwo}{{1.2}{1}}

You can see that \newlabel is a command with two mandatory argument. The first argument is the label name and the second argument has two other groups inside. The first group is the numbering scheme and the second group shows the page.

So you want to extract the first group of the second mandatory argument and then you want to extract the second part of the number.

With the command \@firstoftwo@second you take the first group of the second argument of \newlabel and due to it's defintion you extract your requested number.

Answer 2

This is not an answer, I just would like to add a version for subsubsections. Maybe Marco Daniel (or someone else) can verify whether this is correct (I'm not an expert here):

\documentclass{article}

% for subsections
\makeatletter
\def\@firstoftwo@second#1#2{%
  \def\temp##1.##2\@nil{##2}%
   \temp#1\@nil}
\newcommand\sref[1]{\expandafter\@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\@firstoftwo@second{#1}}
\makeatother

% for subsubsections
\makeatletter
\def\@firstoftwo@third#1#2{%
  \def\temp##1.##2.##3\@nil{##3}%
   \temp#1\@nil}
\newcommand\ssref[1]{\expandafter\@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\@firstoftwo@third{#1}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\section{Section 1}
\section{Section 2}
\section{Section 3}\label{sec}
\subsection{Subsection}\label{subsec}
\subsubsection{Subsubsection}
\subsubsection{Subsubsection}\label{subsubsec}
Now we are in Subsubsection \ssref{subsubsec} of Subsection \sref{subsec} of
Section \ref{sec}
\end{document}

Answer 3

This is @MarcoDaniel's solution generalized for use with article or IEEEtran, with or without hyperref. Besides being more general, it is more robust (works with \pdfstrcmp) and returns expected results (discards \hbox{} from the end of the result, for example). Also includes variants for \subsubsections.

@Mico is 100% correct that this solution does not modify in any way the behavior of \ref, \autoref, \cref etc. Also, with hyperref, the result of \sub(sub)ref is not a link. So what have I been using this for?

Imagine a document where the order of sub(sub)sections in one section (e.g., Results) should follow the same order of sub(sub)sections in another section (e.g., Materials & Methods, Experiments). To ensure this is always the case, I use a structure like this:

\section{Methods}
\subsection{...}
\label{MethodsA}
\section{Results}
\subsection{...}
\label{ResultA}
\CheckIfSubsectionsAreIdentical{MethodsA}{ResultsA}

For this to work, I obviously needed a technique to extract the naked sub(sub)section number from a reference, without any \hboxes, \nulls, or anything other included. This is what \sub(sub)ref is for. With hyperref, it's a replacement for \ref*, the version that does not give you hyperlinks.

And here is the code:

\documentclass{article}
% \documentclass{IEEEtran}
% \usepackage{hyperref}

\makeatletter
\@ifclassloaded{article}{
  \def\lastoftwo@dotted#1.#2\@nil{#2}
  \def\lastofthree@dotted#1.#2.#3\@nil{#3}
  \let\submynthofm\lastoftwo@dotted
  \let\subsubmynthofm\lastofthree@dotted
}{}
\@ifclassloaded{IEEEtran}{
  \def\lastoftwo@hyphen#1-#2\@nil{#2}%
  \def\secondofthree@hyphen#1#2#3\@nil{#2}%
  \def\submynthofm#1#2#3#4\@nil{\lastoftwo@hyphen#4\@nil}%
  \def\subsubmynthofm#1#2#3#4\@nil{\secondofthree@hyphen#4\@nil}%
}{}
\@ifpackageloaded{hyperref}{
  \newcommand{\subfirstofsix}[6]{\submynthofm#1\@nil}
  \newcommand{\subsubfirstofsix}[6]{\subsubmynthofm#1\@nil}
  \newcommand\subref[1]{\expandafter\real@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\subfirstofsix{#1}}
  \newcommand\subsubref[1]{\expandafter\real@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\subsubfirstofsix{#1}}
}{
  \newcommand{\subfirstofthree}[3]{\submynthofm#1\@nil}
  \newcommand{\subsubfirstofthree}[3]{\subsubmynthofm#1\@nil}
  \newcommand\subref[1]{\expandafter\@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\subfirstofthree{#1}}
  \newcommand\subsubref[1]{\expandafter\@setref\csname r@#1\endcsname\subsubfirstofthree{#1}}
}
\@ifclassloaded{article}{
  \newcommand{\subrefvalue}{3}
  \newcommand{\subsubrefvalue}{4}
}{}
\@ifclassloaded{IEEEtran}{
  \newcommand{\subrefvalue}{C}
  \newcommand{\subsubrefvalue}{4}
}{}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
Last subsection is \subref{subsec:last}, 
\ifnum\pdfstrcmp{\subrefvalue}{\subref{subsec:last}}=0 OK! \else Error! \fi

Last subsubsection is \subsubref{subsubsec:last}, 
\ifnum\pdfstrcmp{\subsubrefvalue}{\subsubref{subsubsec:last}}=0 OK! \else Error! \fi

\section{Section}
\section{Section}
\subsection{Subsection}
\subsection{Subsection}
\subsection{Subsection}
\label{subsec:last}
\subsubsection{Test}
\subsubsection{Test}
\subsubsection{Test}
\subsubsection{Test}
\label{subsubsec:last}

\end{document}

Answer 4

Thanks for your question, your solution worked for me. I had to adapt because of two issues: (1) the article was using the IEEEtran document class which has sections I.A.1, I.A.2, II.A.1 and so on; and (2) I wanted to refer to subsection.subsubsection without the section number (e.g., A.1, B.3, etc.).

I then adapted your solution to this:

\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}
\newcommand{\labelsubseccounter}[1]{
    \renewcommand\thesubsubsection{\Alph{subsection}.\arabic{subsubsection}}
    \addtocounter{subsubsection}{-1}
    \refstepcounter{subsubsection}
    \label{#1}
    \renewcommand\thesubsubsection{\thesection.\Alph{subsection}.\arabic{subsubsection}}
}
\begin{document}
\section{This is my section}
For further information see subsection \ref{subsecthree} within this section, 
which is called \ref{onepointthree}, not \ref{onepointfour}.
\subsection{A}
\subsection{B}
\subsection{C}
\subsubsection{C1}\label{onepointthree}\labelsubseccounter{subsecthree}
\subsection{D}\label{onepointfour}


\end{document}

Hope this helps other people that need to adapt this as I did.