Problem with building PDFs

[Freddie Chopin]

W dniu 2013-01-23 17:47, Joel Sherrill pisze:
> _Exit.def was empty for me when "make pdf" failed. I removed it
> by hand and did another make and it succeeded. On another run,
> there was another .def file which was empty.

But if I remove this file (which is generated during "make pdf") and do 
another "make pdf" it is regenerated and the error is the same...

> When I did a "make info pdf", it seemed to work more reliably.

Indeed "make info pdf" "works", but the end result is the same as 
previously - the .pdf is created, yet the process exits with error /;

First run:

> Output written on libc.pdf (326 pages, 695631 bytes).
> Transcript written on libc.log.
> /usr/bin/texi2dvi: pdfetex exited with bad status, quitting.
> make[2]: *** [libc.pdf] Error 1

Second run:

> Output written on libm.pdf (98 pages, 356790 bytes).
> Transcript written on libm.log.
> /usr/bin/texi2dvi: pdfetex exited with bad status, quitting.
> make[2]: *** [libm.pdf] Error 1

Third run is OK, as the PDFs are there.

But your message made me do a little "search" and indeed there are some 
empty (0 bytes) files called stmp-def in many folders + some "normal" 
file that are empty:
> [freddie@arch newlib]$ find -size 0
> ./libm/math/stmp-def
> ./libm/complex/stmp-def
> ./libm/stmp-targetdep
> ./libm/common/stmp-def
> ./libc/stmp-iconvset
> ./libc/time/stmp-def
> ./libc/string/stmp-def
> ./libc/stmp-sigset
> ./libc/stmp-stdio64
> ./libc/stdio/getwc.def
> ./libc/stdio/putwc.def
> ./libc/stdio/stmp-def
> ./libc/signal/stmp-def
> ./libc/stdlib/mallocr.def
> ./libc/stdlib/stmp-def
> ./libc/misc/stmp-def
> ./libc/ctype/stmp-def
> ./libc/stmp-posix
> ./libc/stmp-targetdep
> ./libc/search/stmp-def
> ./libc/reent/stmp-def
> ./libc/stmp-extra
> ./libc/locale/stmp-def
> ./stmp-targ-include

So three .def files that are empty. Could that be the reason? These 3 
names cannot be found in the log of "make pdf", so I guess not...

I guess the real reason is somewhere here:
I've got a failure for these 5 files:
libc:
sscanf.def:275
swscanf.def:261
strftime.def:212
libm:
isgreater.def:55
s_matherr.def:81
Each failure is in exactly the same place:

> @end table
>
>
> @*  <- here's the failing line

I bet such code is present only in these 5 files and nowhere else. In 
each case the error is the same:

> You can't use `@unskip' in vertical mode.
> @*->@unskip
>             @hfil @break @hbox {}@ignorespaces
> l.81 @*

(the line number changes of course [; )

If I remove the troubling @* the error is gone...

Is there anything wrong with this LaTeX construct or maybe my LaTeX is 
misbehaving?

4\/3!!