[tex-live] [olaf@infovore.xs4all.nl: Re: [possible bug] kpsewhich gets confused by trailing slash]

[Thomas Esser]

A simple config change for this year's release!?

Thomas

----- Forwarded message from Olaf Weber <olaf at infovore.xs4all.nl> -----

To: Thomas Esser <te at dbs.uni-hannover.de>
Cc: Thomas Heiserowski <th.heiserowski at gmail.com>,
	tetex at dbs.uni-hannover.de
Subject: Re: [possible bug] kpsewhich gets confused by trailing slash
From: Olaf Weber <olaf at infovore.xs4all.nl>
Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:28:46 +0100
In-Reply-To: <20051030173259.GA23580 at dbs.uni-hannover.de> (Thomas Esser's
 message of "Sun, 30 Oct 2005 18:32:59 +0100")
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Thomas Esser writes:

>> My $HOME env var was set to "/home/thomas/". Running "kpsewhich

> Any search path that uses $HOME/something ends up with a
> double shash if $HOME ends with a slash. So, what you observe
> is the documented behaviour. Read about the special meaning
> of double slashes in the kpathsea manual (texdoc kpathsea or
> http://tug.org/teTeX/tetex-texmfdist/doc/programs/kpathsea.pdf).

> Moral: don't use a trailing slash in $HOME (unless $HOME == / which is
> handled as a special case in kpathsea).

Actually, it would help to systematically replace `$HOME' with `~' in
texmf.cnf, e.g, from

	TEXMFHOME = $HOME/texmf
to

	TEXMFHOME = ~/texmf

In the first case, the generic variable-expanding code is invoked,
which doesn't try to eliminate spurious slashes.  In contrast, if the
code that expands a `~' uses the value of `$HOME' it knows it is a
special case and will strip a trailing slash.

-- 
Olaf Weber

               (This space left blank for technical reasons.)

----- End forwarded message -----