[Tex/LaTex] Pdflatex began stopping on \showthe

tex-core

OK, this I cannot really understand..

Basically, I use scite that calls a lua script, and through that, pdflatex. (If scite is ran from a terminal, then the pdflatex output called through it is dumped to the same terminal, and then one can also interact with pdflatex, in case of errors)

Today, I added to one of my files: 

\showthe\paperheight
\showthe\pdfpageheight
\showthe\paperwidth
\showthe\pdfpagewidth

… and I'd run pdflatex as usual – and I'd notice this in the log:

? > 0.0pt.
l.6 \showthe\paperheight

? > 845.04684pt.
l.7 \showthe\pdfpageheight

? > 0.0pt.
l.8 \showthe\paperwidth

? > 597.50787pt.
l.9 \showthe\pdfpagewidth

… and pdflatex kept on going, and all was fine.

Then, I keep working – and suddenly, pdflatex does not run over the \showthe commands anymore; instead, it starts waiting for a user input! Here I'd answer with 'scroll', i.e. 

? > 845.04684pt.
l.7 \showthe\pdfpageheight

? S
OK, entering \scrollmode...
> 0.0pt.
l.8 \showthe\paperwidth

> 597.50787pt.
l.9 \showthe\pdfpagewidth

… and then it would run through the end!

Now, I am forced to call pdflatex like: 

pdflatex -interaction=scrollmode file.tex ...

… so as to cause pdflatex to 'run through' these commands – but now I'm afraid it will not stop on some more serious error (where I'd otherwise prefer it to stop).

Does anyone have an idea about what happened here – and how do I get my old pdflatex behavior back? 

$ pdflatex --version
pdfTeX 3.1415926-1.40.10-2.2 (TeX Live 2009)
kpathsea version 5.0.0
$ uname -r
2.6.32-26-generic

Thanks in advance,

Cheers!

Best Answer

That is the default behaviour. Use

\the\paperheight

or if you want it only in the terminal output or logfile

\typeout{=== \the\paperheight ===}%
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