I'm feeling very stupid, but I just can't figure out why \hiOK in the 
following works, while \hiKO does not:


-------8<-----------------
\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\hiOK}[2][hi]{ \node {#1 #2}; }
\newcommand{\hiKO}[2][hi]{ node {#1 #2} }

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\hiOK{world}
\end{tikzpicture}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\path \hiKO{world} ;
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}
-------8<-----------------


with the following error message:


! Package tikz Error: Giving up on this path. Did you forget a semicolon?.

See the tikz package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
  ...

l.22 \path \hiKO
                 {world} ;
?



I'm using
      tikz.sty    2008/02/13 v2.00 (rcs-revision 1.27)
      pgf.sty    2008/01/15 v2.00 (rcs-revision 1.12)


Thanks for any help/pointers/advices in advance.

- Lian Tze -

On 28/09/2010 07:46, Lian Tze Lim wrote:
> \documentclass{minimal}
> \usepackage{tikz}
>
> \newcommand{\hiOK}[2][hi]{ \node {#1 #2}; }
> \newcommand{\hiKO}[2][hi]{ node {#1 #2} }
>
> \begin{document}
>
> \begin{tikzpicture}
> \hiOK{world}
> \end{tikzpicture}
>
> \begin{tikzpicture}
> \path \hiKO{world} ;
> \end{tikzpicture}
>
> \end{document}

Your two examples are rather different. In the first case, \hiOK is 
expanded by LaTeX to insert the \node macro. So that can scan ahead and 
see the ";". On the other hand, in the second example I suspect that 
\path scans ahead, sees another macro and stops. So something like

\newcommand*\hiKO[2][hi]{ \path node {#1 #2} }

will work.
-- 
Joseph Wright

On 9/28/10 3:08 PM, Joseph Wright wrote:
>> \newcommand{\hiKO}[2][hi]{ node {#1 #2} }
>> \path \hiKO{world} ;
>
> Your two examples are rather different. In the first case, \hiOK is
> expanded by LaTeX to insert the \node macro. So that can scan ahead and
> see the ";". On the other hand, in the second example I suspect that
> \path scans ahead, sees another macro and stops. So something like
>
> \newcommand*\hiKO[2][hi]{ \path node {#1 #2} }
>
> will work.

Thanks for the explanation! I'll be more careful in defining my commands.


- Lian Tze -