Problems with endfloat package

Question

A minimal example using the endfloat package fails to compile. Before filing a bug report with the maintainer, please, could you take a look if I'm using it correctly? Perhaps you know a workaround?

\documentclass{article}
\pagestyle{empty}

\usepackage{endfloat}

\begin{document}
  \section{Test}
  \begin{table}
    \begin{tabular}{c}
    123 \\
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{Test}
  \end{table}
  Test
  \processdelayedfloats
\end{document}

The error I'm seeing is:

(./texput.aux) (texput.ttt))
Runaway argument?
! File ended while scanning use of \efloat@xfloat.
<inserted text> 
                \par 
<*> texput.tex

? 

I'm on Ubuntu, current TeXlive.

Answer 1

Not sure it's documented (didn't look:-) but due to the way the package scans for the environment

\end{table}

needs to be on its own at the start of the line so delete the spaces before it in your example.

---

This is documented in the endfloat manual

10.1 Literal strings

When floats are being read, LATEX is in verbatim mode. Among other things, this means that the lines like

\end{figure}

must appear on lines by themselves without any whitespace before or after them. A complete reimplementation of the most difficult part of the package is required to fix this limitation, but it is among the distant goals I have.

Answer 2

I just wanted to add that the endfloat package is extremely fragile when it comes to reading float delimiters. I had this error because sometime I terminated \end{float} statements with a percent sign.

I don't know if it is possible to use regular expressions in LaTex to fix the problem but at least a warning should be given in the documentation.

In case you run in the same problem, a tip for debugging: after the error you will need to kill the compiler, then delete the .aux file. On the next recompile look at the last latex warning of reference not found, the offending float is the one next to that reference in the code. Good luck.