Hi Phil, as Stephen points out, one of the tricky bits of working with POV-Ray's
command-line SDL is that where the parser finally decides to throw an error is
not necessarily where the real problem lies.

But in this case, I think you've highlighted the bit of code that POV-Ray
correctly declares is the problem.

First, I think it would help if
#declare thisfilename = magik_cube[X][Y][Z][F]
were terminated by a semicolon
#declare thisfilename = magik_cube[X][Y][Z][F];

Second, and central to your problem, is that it looks as if you are trying to
get the filename to interpreted as a pigment using (what appears to be a macro
called) "paint_tile".

so, either you need to keep things simple and just use

pigment {image_map {png thisfilename}}
instead of
paint_tile(thisfilename)

or you need to check out your macro earlier in the scene (and this is where
Stephen's point may actually be the case) and see what your macro is doing.

I'm envisioning it to be this simple, although the above direct use of the
filename in a pigment statement _without_ a macro is simpler still.

#macro paint_tile(_FN)
pigment {image_map {png _FN}}
#end

You may also consider testing for the existence of the element
magik_cube[X][Y][Z][F], using #ifdef(magik_cube[X][Y][Z][F]), and sending a
debug message to the output stream so you can verify what POV-Ray has stored in
magik_cube[X][Y][Z][F] and is trying to use as a filename.

I'd be tempted to rewrite the box definition to avoid the sequence of scaling
and translation - simply because it's easier to debug, and I often find myself
catching would-be errors before I set them down in code.

All this code is straight off the top of my head, untested, and you're getting
it before I've even had my first coffee - so some of the finer elements of the
proper syntax may be wrong/missing.

Welcome!
Good luck.
I hope to see the progress of your project   :)

Bill

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