[Tex/LaTex] Find where missing } is? Compiler has no clue. Any way of narrowing search down

beamercompilingerrors

So I'm making a beamer document. And sometimes I will forget to add a } somewhere. When I do this, the compiler complains that there is a missing }, but it has no idea where it is. Narrowing it down to at least a subsection would be very helpful. But sometimes if I haven't compiled in a while, I have to delete sections of the document to find the error by process of elimination. Surely there is a better way! Why doesn't the compiler do this natively??

The error I get is this:

"! File ended while scanning use of \frame.

\par
<*> Frankenslides.tex
I suspect you have forgotten a }', causing me
to read past where you wanted me to stop.
I'll try to recover; but if the error is serious,
you'd better typeE' or `X' now and fix your file.
! Emergency stop."

I forgot to add a } after 2^{-1… Thanks!

Best Answer

TeX does give more clues, you just did not show them in your quotation above.

If there is a $x^{$ on a frame the error is

[2])
Runaway argument?
{title of bad frame} \begin {itemize} \item [Esophagus] Four columns \ETC.
! File ended while scanning use of \frame.
<inserted text> 
                \par

You omitted the first three lines which tells you that

[2]

page 2 has been shipped out, so the error is on page 3.

Runaway argument?

It's a {} matching error.

    {title of bad frame} \begin {itemize} \item [Esophagus] Four columns \ETC.

The start of the frame command (or environment) with the mis-matched braces is as shown.

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