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I'm relatively new to Latex, so I hope you'll forgive me if this question is too basic. My document will not compile due to my bibliography, and Latex gives me the following errors. I've actually run all my entries separately following this post but still cannot find where there is an issue (there's no error message in the .blg files). If anyone could offer me some troubleshooting steps, I would be grateful.

./dissertation.tex:127: Undefined control sequence.
\@calc@post@scan ...st@scan \else \def \calc@next 
                                                  {\calc@error #1}\fi \fi \f...
l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

? ./dissertation.tex:127: Undefined control sequence. @calc@post@scan ...fi \fi \fi \fi \fi \calc@next

l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

? ./dissertation.tex:127: Missing \endcsname inserted. <to be read again> \let l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

? ./dissertation.tex:127: Missing \endcsname inserted. <to be read again> \let l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

? ./dissertation.tex:127: Argument of \Hy@setref@link has an extra }. <inserted text> \par l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

? Runaway argument? \fi \iftrue \endcsname @firstoftwo {@safe@activestrue }\org@ifthenelse \ETC. ./dissertation.tex:127: Paragraph ended before \Hy@setref@link was complete. <to be read again> \par l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

? ./dissertation.tex:127: TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=5000]. \blx@mksc@endhead ...y \fi \let \blx@mksc@endhead \relax l.127 \printbibliography[title={Bibliography}]

./dissertation.tex:127: ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced! Transcript written on dissertation.log.

Process aborted

Here's a smaller bit of code that still gives an error:

\documentclass[12pt, notitlepage, twoside]{report}

\usepackage[backend=biber,style=apa,sorting=nyt,uniquename=false]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{/users/dissertation_latex/metafiles/dissertation.bib}

\begin{document}

\parencite{hawkins2002}

\end{document}

and the entry in dissertation.bib:

@inproceedings{hawkins2000,
  title = {Assessment of Naturalness in the {{ProSynth}} Speech Synthesis Project},
  booktitle = {State of the {{Art}} in {{Speech Synthesis}} ({{Ref}}. {{No}}. 2000/058), {{IEE Seminar}} On},
  author = {Hawkins, Sarah and Heid, Sebastian and House, Jill and Huckvale, Mark},
  date = {2000},
  pages = {13--1},
  publisher = {{IET}}
}
Lisa
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    which documentclass are you using? Can you show a small but complete example that demonstrates the error? – Ulrike Fischer Apr 13 '21 at 21:35
  • @UlrikeFischer I am using \documentclass[12pt, notitlepage, twoside]{report} - this is my dissertation so I am not sure how I can provide a MWE, I apologize! Let me try to reproduce the error in a smaller document... – Lisa Apr 13 '21 at 21:38
  • a smaller document produces this error: ERROR - BibTeX subsystem: /var/folders/qx/dy4l9r7d227_vf30d_y9xkzm0000gn/T/JG4potNHGV/dissertation.bib_50692.utf8, line 2246, syntax error: found "contrast", expected "=" INFO - ERRORS: 1 though the most puzzling thing about this to me is it did work a few days ago. I will post sample code in the original post. – Lisa Apr 13 '21 at 21:46
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    you have tagged the question bibtex but presumably (from the fragment shown) you are using biblatex and biber rather than bibtex, but hard to guess what is wrong, either an error in the bib file or the biber cache is corrupted I would guess. – David Carlisle Apr 13 '21 at 21:49
  • this type of errors are normally rather easy to resolve but only if one has the code to reproduce them. So you really need to provide more info about your document. – Ulrike Fischer Apr 13 '21 at 21:51
  • If I change your example to \parencite{hawkins2000} so the key matches the bib file then it runs without error (as posted you get a warning the citation is not defined) – David Carlisle Apr 13 '21 at 21:54
  • @DavidCarlisle Oops, a typo, though when corrected I still get dissertation.bib_50714.utf8, line 2246, syntax error: found "contrast", expected "=" – Lisa Apr 13 '21 at 21:55
  • that will be from biber not from tex, show your entire .blg file from the small document (after correcting the key) I would gues you might want to delete your biber cache but @UlrikeFischer knows more about biblatex than me:-) – David Carlisle Apr 13 '21 at 21:58
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    You probably have a faulty bib entry, look for one with contrast in it and check the commas and the equal signs. – Ulrike Fischer Apr 13 '21 at 22:06
  • @UlrikeFischer that error message posted above tipped me off - there was a pasted sentence in the middle of my bibliography! I have a new error message now but at least I've gotten somewhere. I apologize that I could not provide a very good MWE - my dissertation is many files and bib entries! – Lisa Apr 13 '21 at 22:06
  • The .tex file has \parencite{hawkins2002}, but in the .bib file the entry is called hawkins2000. If I change both to hawkins2000 the document compiles fine for me without any errors. (There is no \printbibliography in the file, which is what the error message points to, but even if I add \printbibliography I get no error.) Please post a small example document that reproduces the error. Check that it really reproduces the error by running it in a new, empty folder. – moewe Apr 14 '21 at 06:27

0 Answers0