How to Debug Parse Errors

[Richard Grubb]

I am new to Lilypond. I have 1.6.0 running on MacOSX 10.1.5. I can 
create .ly files from descriptions in the tutorial and run them through 
ly2dvi, but have not been able to run the first two examples I saved 
from the lilypond.org website. When I run ly2dvi -P standchen.ly, I get 
the following output:

error: parse error, unexpected $, expecting STRING or '}'

error:
LilyPond failed on the input file (exit status 1).

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/sw/bin/ly2dvi", line 1000, in ?
    run_lilypond (files, dep_prefix)
  File "/sw/bin/ly2dvi", line 512, in run_lilypond
    error ( "\n" \
  File "/sw/bin/ly2dvi", line 144, in error
    raise _ ("Exiting ... ")

I checked the file and don't see any obvious missing '}'.
So what does the "unexpected $" mean? Unexpected END-OF-FILE?

When I try another file, petite-ouverture-a-danser.ly, I least get a 
line and column number where the parser gives up, and so I have more 
info to work with.