and errors where a single asterisk at the start of a line mysteriously fails to appear in the typeset output. Both problems arise because! Missing number, treated as zero. <to be read again> p <*> [perhaps]
\\
takes optional arguments. The
command \\*
means “break the line here, and inhibit page break
following the line break”; the command \\[
<dimen>]
means “break the line here and add <dimen> extra vertical space
afterwards”.
The problem arises because \\
looks for the next
non-blank thing; the test it uses ignores the end of the line in
your input text, so that \\
comes to imagine that you
were giving it a ‘modifier’.
An obvious solution is to enclose the stuff at the start of the new
line in braces, typing:
This particular example could be coded (without any problems) in verbatim, but the behaviour does confuse people. The problem also appears in maths mode, in arrays and so on. In this case, large-scale bracketing of things is not a good idea; the TeX primitive{\ttfamily /* C-language comment\\ {[perhaps]} this could be done better\\ {*}/ }
\
relax
(which does nothing except to block
searches of this nature) may be used. From another
comp.text.tex example:
which is a usage this FAQ would not recommend, anyway: refer to the reason not to use\begin{eqnarray} [a] &=& b \\ \relax[a] &=& b \end{eqnarray}
eqnarray
.
Note that the amsmath package modifies the behaviour of
\\
in maths. With amsmath, the
eqnarray
example doesn’t need any special action
(\
relax
or braces).
This answer last edited: 2012-09-02
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