[texhax] Suppressing chapter numbers in sections, in book documentclass

[P. P. Narayanaswami]

I am processing a book that has 100 sections, and no chapter or part.
I am using "book" documentclass (for various reasons). 
When processed in LaTeX, the section numbers (and in TOC also) are printed as
0.1, 0.2, ..., 0.100, using "0" as default chapter number. Is there any way to
suppress this default chapter number "0", and get only the section numbers as
1, 2, ... , 100, in both the section titles and the TOC?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Narayanaswami

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