[tex-live] abstract.bst: two different versions, and a file collision problem

[Thomas Esser]

> The reason that this is relevant is that, as far as I understand, the
> hash-table lookup in the kpathsea library cannot guarantee a directory
> search order, so that the TeX user has no easy way to prevent an
> out-of-date file being used.  [I would be happy to be corrected on
> this point.]

Speaking for web2c/kpathsea:

A hash lookup will first retrieve a list of directories in which a
certain file resides. Then, this list is matched against the search path
components (in this matching, the *whole* list is matched against each
search path; one by one). The result is that the order of search path
components is always followed even if ls-R hashing is used.

So, if your search path is
  /some/texmf/tex/newstuff//:/some/texmf/tex/oldstuff
then always the newstuff will have precedence. Of course,
  /some/texmf/tex//
gives unspecified behaviour.

Thomas