[tex-k] TeX error exit upon \showthe

[Olaf Weber]

Hartmut Henkel writes:

> I'm wondering about the following, in TeX and pdfTeX:
> Upon \showthe\wd0 one gets e. g.

>> 5.55994pt.
> l.13 \showthe\wd0

> ? h
> This isn't an error message; I'm just \showing something.

> So it's only an informal message, harmless, definitely not an error! But
> in tex.web still the procedure error is called from procedure
> show_whatever. Consequently TeX or pdfTeX end with uexit(1), which means
> FAIL, so that e. g. a make would quit after such a TeX run. It looks
> wrong to me, but it is in the TeX core... Can anybody give me a short
> hint about this? Thanks a lot.

Well, it _is_ in the TeX core, in the sense that even after a \show*
the error history has become "tainted".  And the core TeX code (that
is, DEK's code) doesn't signal to the 'error' routine that this was
intentional and harmless...

-- 
Olaf Weber

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