[texhax] inexplicable LaTeX weirdness

[Philip G. Ratcliffe]

> > I am a relatively new user. I successfully created a paper using
> > OzTeX and was working on a second paper  last Friday. I had compiled
> > about half of it. Monday morning I opened the second paper and was
> > working on it. When I tried to TeX I got Unreadable Control Sequence
> > documentclass{article}. When I tried the first paper, I got the
> > same. When I tried any document, I got the same.
> > I'm using OS 9 on a G4. My son installed some games over the
> > weekend - could some extensions be turned off?

Doesn't seem to be anyhing to with extensions since TeX did run.

> You've switched from using the LaTeX format to (Plain) TeX.

I hate to differ but I think not; the error in theat case would read

! Undefined Control Sequence
l.1 \documentclass
                  {article}

I suspect, since it says instead "Unreadable", that somehow your editor or a
file-corrupting crash (or, oops, a virus) has inserted ascii control
characters into your file (possibly as the first character), neither TeX nor
LaTeX (nor any other flavour of TeX) lkes them.

Cheers,  Phil