[OS X TeX] tabular newbie question

[Samuel Lelievre]

Google Kreme wrote:
>I was trying to create a nice table of the Half Life 2 cheat codes
>(the actaul document will be much longer, but I've reduced it here to
>the minimum that doesn't work:
<snip>
>TeX Shop gives me:
>
>! Missing $ inserted.
><inserted text>
>                 $
>l.9   Set Gravity & sv_
>                        gravity  \\
>?
>! Extra }, or forgotten $.
><template> \unskip \hfil }
>                           \hskip \tabcolsep \hskip 
>-.5\arrayrulewidth \vrule...
>l.10  S
>        hows FPS Rate & cl_showfps 1 \\
>?

The error you see has nothing to do with the tabular environment.
The character _ is special in TeX, it is used for subscript, and
only in math mode. So whenever TeX sees it in non-math mode, it
assumes a $ has been forgotten.

You can tell TeX to treat a special character as normal by using
the command \string. The character immediately following \string
will be considered normal.

For instance, typing
   sv\string_gravity
should get you rid of the error you had.

Hope that helps.
Samuel Lelievre
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