[XeTeX] Strange problem with 0.996 and 0.9995 xetex and File Names.

[Jonathan Kew]

On 4 Sep 2009, at 22:55, Karl Berry wrote:

>> Someone on the TeXShop Forum came up with a rather strange problem
>> using either xetex 0.996 (or 0.9995 in the TL-2009 pretest)
>> involving file names with spaces in them. Using a file with name
>> `Summary II.tex' the following error was generated
>>
>> ! I can't find file `"Summary II.texSELFAUTOPARENT"'.
>> <*> "Summary II.tex"SELFAUTOPARENT
>
> FWIW, both
>
> xetex "Summary II"
> and
> xetex "Summary II.tex"
>
> work fine for me on i386-linux.  But they do indeed fail for me on
> universal-darwin; I get
>  ! I can't find file Summary II.texTEXMF"'
> instead of SELFAUTOPARENT, but same difference.
>
> I doubt it is anything about texmf.cnf; can't imagine what it would  
> be.
> My guess is that there is some kind of strange bug in the space- 
> handling
> code and/or mallocs, and it gets exposed on macosx for some reason.


I think this is a bug in xetex's filename-quoting code. I have been  
able to reproduce the behavior with the current xetex binary from  
TL'09, but not with a local build; this is probably due to differences  
in compiler version, options, or environment that affect the details  
of how memory allocation happens to turn out.

Anyhow, I will check in a fix for what I believe is the underlying  
error, and hope that when Dick rebuilds the binaries, the bug will be  
eradicated.

(committed to TL as xetex 0.9995.2, svn r.15135)

JK