13

Question

Why am I getting multiple misplaced \noalign errors?

Reproducible example

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}

\section{Table test}

\begin{longtable}{llc}
\hline
 &  & \multicolumn{1}{c}{All} \\ 
\hline
m & \rule{0pt}{1.7\normalbaselineskip}April  & $1$ \\
 & \nopagebreak July  & $1$ \\
 & \nopagebreak June  & $1$ \\
l & \rule{0pt}{1.7\normalbaselineskip}C  & $1$ \\
 & \nopagebreak F  & $1$ \\
 & \nopagebreak S  & $1$ \\
nums & \rule{0pt}{1.7\normalbaselineskip}28  & $2$ \\
 & \nopagebreak 62  & $1$ \\
\hline 
\end{longtable}
\end{document}

Desired output (through reproducible research toolchain---see below)

desired output

Troubleshooting---Manual Tex Editing

It seems misplaced /noalign errors can be vexing. My \hline is preceded by \\. Does the comment about booktabs apply here? If so, how do I fix it? Changing \\ to \\* or \tabularnewline doesn't seem to help. As far as I can tell, this is not a \centering issue.

Removing \nopagebreak seems to make the errors go away but I don't think this is the right solution for me since the solution must work with long data tables in the context of a report using longtable. Please see below.

Context

I believe that this is really a LaTeX question and not an R question but some context might help.

I am trying to generate a long report with multiple tables while adhering to principles of reproducible research by using R and the tables and Hmisc packages.

I would like to dynamically create a table with frequency counts of observations across multiple factored variables with some vertical space between each factored variable.

The tables package helps me do that using a nice formula interface, reminiscent of SAS proc tabulate. The RowFactor() function with the suppressfirst=FALSE and spacing=X arguments produces the necessary output provided I specify nopagebreak = "" instead of nopagebreak = "\\nopagebreak " or if I use a tabular environment instead of the longtable package. Unfortunatley, some of my tables are long and span page breaks. The tables package supports the LaTeX longtable package, as implemented on pages 26-28 of the tables vignette; but it doesn't seem to work with my data tables or with my minimal reproducible example.

Reproducible R/Sweave code:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}
\SweaveOpts{concordance=TRUE}
\section{Table test}

<<test, echo=TRUE, results=tex>>=
options(width=80)
require(tables)
set.seed(10)
df <- data.frame(id=seq(1,3,1), 
                 m=sample(month.name, 3, replace=TRUE), 
                 l=sample(LETTERS, 3, replace=TRUE), 
                 nums=sample(1:100, 3, replace=TRUE))
latex(
  tabular(
    RowFactor(m, 
              suppressfirst=FALSE,
              ## default argument
              nopagebreak = "\\nopagebreak ",
              ## works if specify the following
              #nopagebreak = "",
              spacing=3)
    +RowFactor(l, 
              suppressfirst=FALSE,
              ## default argument
              nopagebreak = "\\nopagebreak ",
              ## works if specify the following
              #nopagebreak = "",
              spacing=3)
    +RowFactor(nums, 
               suppressfirst=FALSE,
               ## default argument
               nopagebreak = "\\nopagebreak ",
               ## works if specify the following
               #nopagebreak = "",
               spacing=3) ~1, data=df), 
  options=list(tabular="longtable")
)

@
\section{Session info}
<<sessionInfo>>=
sessionInfo()
@


\end{document}
5
  • What's \nopagebreak supposed to do?
    – egreg
    Dec 2, 2013 at 18:56
  • @egreg In this context, \nopagebreak is intended to keep the table from breaking within table sections (e.g., ok to break between l, m and nums but not between the individual subrows. See LaTeX help, this question1 and this question2 which describe \nopagebreak.
    – penguinv22
    Dec 2, 2013 at 20:11
  • 1
    It has no place where you put it.
    – egreg
    Dec 2, 2013 at 20:48
  • @egreg, knowing that my small reproducible example is intended to demonstrate a problem with long data tables, and that the tex code was generated dynamically, what do you think about putting nopagebreak after each \\ except at the end of each grouping of rows? This seems to compile correctly. Can you anticipate inherent problems with this approach? Ideally, the solution would be generalizable to the tool chain. If I suggest making a change to the R tables package regarding its handling of page breaks in longtables, I want to make the suggestion as robust as possible.
    – penguinv22
    Dec 2, 2013 at 21:08
  • 1
    In order to avoid a page break at \\, use \\*
    – egreg
    Dec 2, 2013 at 21:15

2 Answers 2

6

All \nopagebreak's are undesired:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}

\section{Table test}

\begin{longtable}{llc}
\hline
 &  & \multicolumn{1}{c}{All} \\ 
\hline
m & \rule{0pt}{1.7\normalbaselineskip}April  & $1$ \\
 &  July  & $1$ \\
 &  June  & $1$ \\
l & \rule{0pt}{1.7\normalbaselineskip}C  & $1$ \\
 &  F  & $1$ \\
 &  S  & $1$ \\
nums & \rule{0pt}{1.7\normalbaselineskip}28  & $2$ \\
 & 62  & $1$ \\
\hline 
\end{longtable}
\end{document}

enter image description here

2
  • In my question, I note that removing \nopagebreak avoids the misplaced \align error message. I'm interested in your rationale. Why are all \nopagebreak undesired? Is it a technical reason? In my context of needing to present long tables of categorical data, I would prefer that the longtable breaks between row categories (e.g., m, l, or nums) but not between the sub-rows.
    – penguinv22
    Dec 2, 2013 at 20:18
  • 2
    @penguinv22 saying undesired is just a polite way of saying they are a syntax error that can do nothing but generate an error in the position used. You used them in the middle column so I can't really guess the intended meaning as there is no possibility of page breaks being considered in the middle of the row. If you want to prevent page breaking between rows use \\* rather than \\ You can use \nopagebreak but it has to be at the start of the row \\\nopagebreak is equivalent to \\* Dec 2, 2013 at 22:57
43

This isn't the answer to the original post, but I came here Googling for "Longtable misplaced noalign" so my eventual solution might be useful for someone.

In my case I needed a \\ after the \caption and \label. This seems incredibly counterintuitive to me so if anyone can explain why or tell me where this is documented I'd be grateful.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{longtable}
\begin{document}
\begin{longtable}{ll}
% Uncomment the \\ on the next line and the misplaced \noalign disappears!
\caption{Captions should appear on top of tables}\label{tbl:table}%\\
    \toprule
                  & foo \\
    \midrule
    \endfirsthead
    bar           & 1 \\
    baz           & 2 \\
    \bottomrule
\end{longtable}
\end{document}
6
  • 2
    I can't tell you why that works but I had the same problem and this worked perfectly, thanks! Jan 15, 2018 at 11:47
  • 1
    Same here, if someone has an explanation for that would be cool
    – po.pe
    Sep 12, 2019 at 7:31
  • 1
    Thanks for adding that; anyone for an explanation?
    – NWaters
    May 16, 2020 at 16:26
  • 8
    The explanation is that the longtable package re-defines the \caption command insert the caption in a row. Since the caption is now a table row, it also needs to end like a table row: With \\. The documentation says: The \caption{...} command is essentially equivalent to \multicolumn{n}{c}{\parbox{\LTcapwidth}{...}} where n is the number of columns of the table. Jul 19, 2020 at 17:08
  • woa thanks so much, this works perfectly for me.
    – Long
    Aug 5, 2022 at 13:04

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