>>> "ESF" == Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

> On Monday, 30 Aug 2021 at 18:01, Uwe Brauer wrote:
>> Does not work since the counter is not saved when increased.

> Why not save it then?  I.e. something like this:

> (defun my-insert-add-counter ()
>   (interactive)
>   (setq my-subject-counter (+ my-subject-counter 1))
>   (insert (int-to-string my-subject-counter))) 

Thanks very much, recursion, sigh, I should have thought about it.

So I cooked up that 

(defun my-reset-subject-counter () 
"Reset the counter to ZERO!"
  (interactive)
  (setq my-subject-counter 0)
  (message "Now my-subject counter has been reset to ZERO!"))

(defun my-new-insert-subject-counter ()
  "Insert a string of the form [`counter/Total'] "
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (setq my-subject-counter (+ my-subject-counter 1))
    (let ((total (read-string "Total number: " )))
    (message-carefully-insert-headers (list (cons 'Subject (concat "[" (int-to-string my-subject-counter) "/" total "]")))))))

Which is very useful for my workflow, thanks again.

Uwe