contributor in amsart cannot work

Question

I wrote an article, and one author contributed to write an appendix. He suggested that I applied the command \contrib[With an appendix by]{sb.}. However, I don't know why it does not work. When I compile, it reads: undefined control sequence.

\documentclass{amsart}
\begin{document}
\title{title}
\author{names}
\contrib[With an appendix by]{sb}
\maketitle
content
\end{document} 

Do I need to input some new packages to run the \contrib? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

As mentioned in the comments, this can be solved by adding

\makeatletter
\let\@wraptoccontribs\wraptoccontribs
\makeatother

to your preamble.

According to this link, it is a bug in the ams classes. All credits to Enrico Gregorio at the Google forum.

Answer 2

This is a very old bug of amsart.cls that I appear to have analyzed back in 2007 in a comp.text.tex thread.

Here are the relevant lines in amsart.cls, where the error is apparent on line 495:

480 \newcommand\contrib[2][]{%
481   \def\@tempa{#1}%
482   \ifx\@empty\@tempa
483   \else
484     \ifresetcontrib \@xcontribs
485     \else \global\resetcontribtrue
486     \fi
487   \fi
488   \ifx\@empty\contribs
489     \gdef\contribs{#1 #2}%
490   \else
491     \g@addto@macro\contribs{\and#1 #2}%
492   \fi
493   \@wraptoccontribs{#1}{#2}%
494 }
495 \def\wraptoccontribs#1#2{}

The correct code should be

495 \def\@wraptoccontribs#1#2{}

The macro is just a hook, possibly used for some in-house processing if the paper is to be inserted as a contribution to some volume.

The workaround is adding

\makeatletter
\let\@wraptoccontribs\wraptoccontribs
\makeatother

to the document preamble.

\documentclass{amsart}

\makeatletter
\let\@wraptoccontribs\wraptoccontribs
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\title{title}
\author{names}
\contrib[With an appendix by]{sb}
\maketitle
content
\end{document}