[tex-k] LaTeX segfaults with source specials and space in filename

[Frank Küster]

(I guess you guys are all subscribed to tex-k, so I don't Cc: you. But
please keep the Debian address in the Cc.)

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) schrieb:

>         latex --src-specials '\nonstopmode\input{foo bar.tex}'
>
> You don't mention what version gets the seg fault.

Excuse me - it's the current stable tetex version:

$ latex --version
TeX (Web2C 7.4.5) 3.14159
kpathsea version 3.4.5
Copyright (C) 1997-2003 D.E. Knuth.
Kpathsea is copyright (C) 1997-2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

> Also, \input{foo bar.tex} did not actually try to read a file "foo
> bar.tex" in any case that I tried, but just "foo.tex".  

That's clear, and this is not the problem - the problem is that the user
does not get the information that file "foo.tex" couldn't be found (from
which he can conclude he has a problem with the space), but just a
segfault; and this is even worse with the AUC-TeX frontend.

> My recollection
> is that kpathsea will handle the spaces, but TeX considers a space
> token (catcode 10) to end a filename.  Not sure if there's an easy way
> to read a filename with spaces these days.

It is possible on some implementations, e.g. mikTeX on Win32.

Bye, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie