wordcount problem

[Simon Richards]

Thanks to those who suggested wordcount. Perhaps you could now help me
with a problem I have running wordcount on my document.

Running latex on wordcount.tex seems to work and generates the logfile
which I can run grep -c on. However, running the shell script results in
a "LaTeX run was apparently unsuccessful" error. So I took out the '||
die "LaTeX run" ' part and it runs to completion.

I'm not a shell script expert, so can anyone tell me what constitutes a
failed LaTeX run?

Supplementary information: No dvi file is produced for my document and
the wordcount.dvi just contains a couple of random extracts of my
document.
--
Simon Richards
mailto:s.ric...@physics.org
http://freespace.virgin.net/sd.richards
http://www.durnovaria-silver-band.org.uk

[Michael J Downes]

Simon Richards <si...@perisher.freeserve.co.uk> wrote

> Running latex on wordcount.tex seems to work and generates the logfile
> which I can run grep -c on. However, running the shell script results in
> a "LaTeX run was apparently unsuccessful" error. So I took out the '||
> die "LaTeX run" ' part and it runs to completion.
>
> I'm not a shell script expert, so can anyone tell me what constitutes a
> failed LaTeX run?

Normally it means an error message, either a low level TeX error (such
as "missing $ inserted") or some invocation of \errmessage.

However most versions of TeX that I have seen also return a nonzero
exit status if the document contains \show, \showthe, \showbox,
since they normally stop for user interaction.

> Supplementary information: No dvi file is produced for my document and
> the wordcount.dvi just contains a couple of random extracts of my
> document.

Sounds like your document might be a good test case. If you want
to send me something like the preamble + first chapter I could
try investigating.

PS. How do you define "word" for the purposes of counting?

[Simon Richards]

OK. There are a number of non-fatal errors - things like overfull \hbox
etc - things I'm not bothering about until I get to the final copy. I
guess that's what's causing wordcount to fall over.

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