problems without \nextproblem leads to missing number with xelatex

[thorstengrothe]

Take firstexercise of the examples in the last prerelease package. These exercises do not have
the \nextproblem tag before \begin{problem}. The compilation leads to this error

Missing number, treated as zero. \begin{problem}

but only with xelatex, with pdflatex it compiles without an error. If you set \nextproblem{points=6} it works with xelatex too. If you set \nextproblem{tag=a} the error comes again.

Is this a bug?

Thorsten

[Strauman]

Interesting. It's definitely not supposed to be like this? Which other compilers have you tried other than xelatex?

[thorstengrothe]

It took me a long time to find it out. Because the bug only appears if comment.cut is not there. If the file exists xelatex works. So to reproduce delete all helper files from pdflatex/xelatex (*.aux, etc) and make sure to delete comment.cut too and compile with xelatex.

I only tested pdflatex and xelatex...

[Strauman]

I found the error. And it's huge. \pdfstrcmp does not work in xelatex. I use it everywhere. Darn.

[thorstengrothe]

Hm, sounds not so good but I'm glad that I was right. Maybe this could help, I found a discussion about \pdfstrcmp between some contributors well known in the latex scene.

Link

Thorsten

[Strauman]

Yup. I saw that as well. I guess I have to find some other solution at some point.