Basic elisp problem while customizing Emacs

[npra1025]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble customizing Emacs on my iBook and I was hoping you'd
be able to give me some assistance.  I'm using the AUCTeX package and
in my .emacs file I have the following LaTeX hook:

(setq TeX-command-list
  (append TeX-command-list
    '(("compile-latex" compile-latex TeX-run-LaTeX nil t)
      ("compile-pdflatex compile-pdflatex TeX-run-LaTeX nil t)))

Each entry in TeX-command-list is supposed to represent a LaTeX-related
command.  The format is ("string command name" "string command to
execute" "how to execute the command" + various options).

Now, if I replace compile-latex and compile-pdflatex by a literal
string representing the path of the command that I would like to
execute (in this case for example "/Users/npra1025/bin/compile-latex"),
then everything works fine.  If, however, I make the following
modification:

(setq compile-latex "/Users/npra1025/bin/compile-latex")

then I get "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil".  If I use defvar or a
related construct, I get the same type of error (always something with
"wrong type argument").

This strikes me as very odd, and I really don't know what to make of
it, let alone solve it.  I would have thought that putting (setq
compile-latex ...) wouldn't have made a difference, but obviously it
does...

Can anyone help me with this? 


Best wishes,

N.