[OS X TeX] Error in TikZ code hard to find

[Ross Moore]

Hi Don,

On 12/11/2014, at 10:40 AM, Don Green Dragon wrote:

> Hello All,
> 
> I hope the following will not be too trivial for the knowledgeable people on this list but possibly it will help someone who regularly creates graphics with the wonderful TikZ package.
> 
> Was working on a document with three chapters and was revising certain parts of chapter 1, hence it was the only chapter whose source code was active.
> 
> Decided to include another {tikzpicture} environment. It was very simple and short and I was confident that the code would work, so typeset. TeXShop replies with an error of the form
> 
> .Chapters/Chapter1.tex: 5805: Undefined control sequence
> \Generic error …
> 					#4 \errhelp  \@err@ ...
> 
> l. 5805 … y over the closed interval $[0 \,..\, p]


What happens if you put a set of braces around the first {tikzpicture} environment?

i.e.
{
 \begin{tikzpicture}
  ...
  \path (7, 0.5) node[right[ {Picture of blah blah blah}
  ...
 \end{tikzpicture}
}

I'd expect that the error should now show up much earlier,
instead of 100+ lines later.

> 										   $.
> 
> I get those kind of messages all the time because I make careless mistakes in typing; e.g., type \em[h{. . .} instead of \emph{. . .}. Usually the error message identifies the offending control sequence, but in this case I could not figure out which string was the offender.
> 
> By the way, I use  source code fragments of the form $[a \,..\, b]$ often and they had caused no problems in the past. I focused on what appeared to be the offending  $[0 \,..\, p]$.
> 
> After a couple of hours of trying this and that, including a suspicion that TeXShop was acting badly and so  RESTART and SHUT DOWM were tried, and much more, which I will avoid relating. Here follows my error. 
> 
> In the code for {tikzpicture} I had written (not including the line number 5682)
> 
> 5682 \path (7, 0.5) node[right[ {Picture of blah blah blah};
> 
> instead of 
> 
> 5682 \path (7, 0.5) node[right] {Picture of blah blah blah};
> 
> and it was that incorrect occurrence of `[‘ that triggered the error that was reported about line 5805.
> 
> I know! I should have checked the tikzpicture code right away since the attempt to typeset it resulted in `strange’ behaviour. Usually, TikZ catches those sort of errors so you can track them down.
> 
> That’s it.
> 
> 
> don green dragon
> fergdc at shaw.ca


Hope this helps,

	Ross

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au 
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-206      
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
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