Suppress leading zeroes in email subject text - 4.6c

[Hilsbos, Margaret A]

Hello WUG'ers,

On a 4.6c system I'm exploring implementation of service notifications with workflow. I have a workflow to trigger when a task is released, that sends a mail to the user responsible for the task. I am trying to keep the subject line compact, something like "Task <task #> of <notif. type> <notif. #> has been released to you".  Currently the leading zeroes are showing, making the subject line longer than I would like, and making the subject less readable (and seriously, we will not ever have 1000 or more tasks on a notification). 

Is there a way to tell the system to suppress leading zeroes in the subject line? I know in 620+ I could use programmed binding to move only the digits I want. But we're in 4.6c that doesn't have programmed binding (and maybe that isn't the best way anyway). 

If I can't do it in the definition of the mail, what is the best way to create the formatted value and pass it to the task container? (I hope I don't need a background method to do the formatting...)

Thanks for any and all ideas!

Margaret Hilsbos
Day & Zimmermann