[texhax] whitespace before \end{figure} command

[Brian Papa]

I'm getting errors if I have any whitespace before the \end{figure} 
command in my captions.  I'm wondering if this is normal behavior and 
there should never be whitespace before a command like this, or if it is 
an indication of some other problem?

The following works ok:
\begin{figure}
  \noindent\includegraphics[width=40pc,angle=0]{./figures/figure01.eps}
  \caption{Enter the caption for your figure here.  Repeat as
  necessary for each of your figures. Create a figures directory and
  place all figures in that directory.}\label{f1}
\end{figure}

but space added before the "\end{figure} command result in errors:
\begin{figure}
  \noindent\includegraphics[width=40pc,angle=0]{./figures/figure01.eps}
  \caption{Enter the caption for your figure here.  Repeat as
  necessary for each of your figures. Create a figures directory and
  place all figures in that directory.}\label{f1}
    \end{figure}

The errors given are a bit unclear to me:
! Fle ended while scanning use of \next
<inserted text>
    \par
!Emergency stop

In the second case, any reference to figure 1 just appears as question 
marks.

Any insight you can provide would be helpful; hopefully I'm not missing 
something too obvious.

-Brian Papa