Comment (by Steven R. Brandt):

The problem is, the grammar does not currently see the par file in terms of lines. It treats whitespace much the same as C does. We could revise it to make whitespace important, but this seems of dubious value at best.

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Ticket URL: https://bitbucket.org/einsteintoolkit/tickets/issues/1881/unclear-error-message-for-parameter-file