Ethyl 2-[(2,6-dimethyl-phen-yl)hydrazono]-3-oxobutanoate.

The title compound, C(14)H(18)N(2)O(3), crystallizes with two independent mol-ecules in the asymmetric unit, having closely comparable geometries. Both mol-ecules are essentially planar [maximum deviations from the mean plane of 0.069 (1) and 0.068 (1) Å for the two mol-ecules] and contain an intra-molecular N-H⋯O hydrogen bond which generates a ring with graph-set motif S(6). In the crystal, the mol-ecules are linked into chains along the c axis by inter-molecular C-H⋯O hydrogen bonds, and inter-molecular C-H⋯π inter-actions are also present.