Tbl and Troff

[gordon at gypsy.UUCP]

                HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ran across very strange errors while working with tbl and troff.
My files consisted of a number of tables mixed with text.  I ran
each table separately through tbl and that work out all right.  
However, when I combined several of this tables together I got the 
following error from tbl:

      File x: line y: bad table specification character.

Well, there was no error on line y, and, besides, the table was OK 
when I was running it through tbl separately.

So, I have tried to monkey around with the file and I've noticed that
if I insert a couple of blank lines between the tables, the tbl will
stop complain  (sometimes).  Other times, deletion of a row of
information in one table could stop tbl complaining about some other
table.  But even if the file runs through tbl some of tables get 
garbled when I run it through troff.

Does anybody know what could possibly cause this problem ?

p.s we are running Unix 4.2 on Vax 780.


------------
Igor V. Gordon
Siemens Research and Technology Laboratories
Princeton, NJ

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