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If I have a minipage

\begin{minipage}{5cm}
content
\end{minipage}

How can I determine its height and save this value as a length?

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Welcome to TeX.sx! – Peter Jansson Mar 3 at 10:30

1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote accepted 
\newlength\foo

\settoheight\foo{\begin{minipage.....

If you also want to typeset the minipage you may want to save it in a box and instead say

\settoheight\foo{\usebox\mybox}

rather than typesetting it twice once just for measuring purposes.

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Thanks, this seems to work. However, if I use a complicated content in the minipage (a large tikz image), I get a ! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=5000] error. – Carlos Mar 3 at 10:27
Yes, both versions fail due to the same error but the standalone minipage works. I use this code in a \newcommand environment, so I have something like \newsavebox{\sb}\newcommand{\cmd}[1]{ \savebox{\b}{...minipage{#1}...}\settoheight{\foo}{\usebox{\sb}}\print{\usebox{\‌​sb}} }. – Carlos Mar 3 at 10:37
the newcommand there will add one extra input stack entry so you could try it without that. On the version that works what is the line in the log (about 8 lines from the end) file that looks like 63i,9n,74p,723b,1727s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s in particular what is the first number before i I suspect that you only just made it:-) – David Carlisle Mar 3 at 10:55
5000i,10n,75p,552b,1292s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s. Please excuse me blowing up this rather simple question, but there seems to be a problem with the whole \savebox formalism when I use it in a tikz node. Probably my problem is related to that. – Carlos Mar 3 at 11:03
your tikz code used up the entire save stack 5000 out of 5000 that means you are living on borrowed time, one more newcommand or input or a passing butterfly and your document will fail. Possibly you should ask a tikz specific question with an example and ask why it has eaten so much save stack. – David Carlisle Mar 3 at 11:32
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