[metapost] Difference between "mpost file.mp" and "mpost ./file.mp"

[Dirk Laurie]

On Thu, Sep 09, 2010 at 02:07:53PM +0200, Rasmus Villemoes wrote:
> 
> When using the TEX module to typeset labels in a for loop, I
> accidentally discovered that there is a difference between calling
> mpost as "mpost -tex=latex file.mp" and "mpost -tex=latex
> ./file.mp". In the former case, the labels come out as expected,
> whereas in the latter, I only get 0's. Is this documented or expected?
> I can see that the latter produces more output to the terminal as
> well, although I can't figure out what it means.
> 
> ====
> ...
> outputtemplate := "%j-%c.eps";
> ...
> ====

The statement above does not compile under MetaPost 0.993
on my system (Ubuntu 8.10, texlive-metapost).  When I remove it, 
the files produced by the two calls to mpost are identical
and produce the correct output when the following program 
is presented to pdflatex:

====
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document} ~
\convertMPtoPDF{file.1}{1}{1}
\end{document}
====

So either your problem is caused by the statement I removed, or it 
depends on which release of metapost you have, or it depends on the 
underlying system.

Dirk