Kpathsea: A library for path searching

# Kpathsea library ¶

This manual documents the Kpathsea library for path searching. It corresponds to version 6.4.2/dev, released in January 2026.

## Table of Contents

## 1 Introduction ¶

This manual corresponds to version 6.4.2/dev of the Kpathsea library, released in January 2026.

The library’s fundamental purpose is to return a filename from a list of directories specified by the user, similar to what shells do when looking up program names to execute.

The following software, all of which is maintained in parallel, uses this library:

- Dviljk (see the ‘`dvilj`’ man page)
- Dvipsk (see Dvips: A DVI driver)
- GNU font utilities (see GNU font utilities)
- Web2c (see Web2c: A TeX implementation)
- Xdvik (see the ‘`xdvi`’ man page)

Other software that we do not maintain also uses it.

Kpathsea is now maintained as part of the TeX Live distribution (https://tug.org/texlive), which includes several more Kpathsea-using programs. For information on configuration, building, installing, and more, see Building TeX Live.

The library is still actively maintained. If you have comments or suggestions, please send along (see Reporting bugs).

The Kpathsea library is distributed under the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1 or (at your option) any later version. In short, this means if you write a program using the library, you must (offer to) distribute the source to the library, along with any changes you have made, and allow anyone to modify the library source and distribute their modifications. It does not mean you have to distribute the source to your program using the library, although we hope you will. See accompanying files for the text of the GNU licenses, or https://gnu.org/licenses.

If you know enough about TeX to be reading this manual, then you (or your institution) should consider joining the TeX Users Group (if you’re already a member, thanks!). TUG produces the periodical TUGboat, sponsors an annual meeting and publishes the proceedings, and arranges courses on TeX for all levels of users throughout the world. See https://tug.org for information.

### 1.1 History ¶

This section is for those people who are curious about how the library came about. If you like to read historical accounts of software, we urge you to seek out the GNU Autoconf manual and the “Errors of TeX” paper by Don Knuth, published in his book Digital Typography, among other places.

[Karl writes.] My first ChangeLog entry for Web2c seems to be February 1990, but I may have done some work before then. In any case, Tim Morgan and I were jointly maintaining it for a time. (I should mention here that Tim had made Web2c into a real distribution long before I had ever used it or even heard of it, and Tom Rokicki did the original implementation. When I started, I was using `pxp` and `pc` on VAX 11/750’s and the hot new Sun 2 machines.)

It must have been later in 1990 and 1991 that I started working on TeX for the Impatient. Dvips, Xdvi, Web2c, and the GNU fontutils (which I was also writing at the time) all used different environment variables, and, more importantly, had different bugs in their path searching. This became extremely painful, as I was stressing everything to the limit working on the book. I also desperately wanted to implement subdirectory searching, since I couldn’t stand putting everything in one big directory, and also couldn’t stand having to explicitly specify `cm`, `pandora`, … in a path.

In the first incarnation, I just hacked separately on each program—that was the original subdirectory searching code in both Xdvi and Dvips. That is, I tried to go with the flow in each program, rather than changing the program’s calling sequences to conform to new routines.

Then, as bugs inevitably appeared, I found I was fixing the same thing three times (Web2c and fontutils were already sharing code, since I maintained both of those—there was no Dvipsk or Xdvik or Dviljk at this point). After a while, I finally started sharing source files. They weren’t yet a library, though. I just kept things up to date with shell scripts. (I was developing on a 386 running ISC 2.2 at the time, and so didn’t have symbolic links. An awful experience.)

The ChangeLogs for Xdvik and Dvipsk record initial releases of those distributions in May and June 1992. I think it was because I was tired of the different configuration strategies of each program, not so much because of the path searching. Autoconf was being developed by David MacKenzie and others, and I was adapting it to TeX and friends.

I started to make a separate library that other programs could link with on my birthday in April 1993, according to the ChangeLog. I don’t remember exactly why I finally took the time to make it a separate library; a conversation with david zuhn initiated it. Just seemed like it was time.

Dviljk got started in March 1994 after I bought a Laserjet 4. (Kpathsea work got suspended while Norm Walsh and I, with Gustaf Neumann’s help, implemented a way for TeX to get at all those neat builtin LJ4 fonts … such a treat to have something to typeset in besides Palatino!)

By spring of 1995, I had implemented just about all the path-searching features in Kpathsea that I plan to, driven beyond my initial goals by Thomas Esser and others. I then started to integrate Web2c with Kpathsea. After the release of a stable Web2c, I hope to be able to stop development, and turn most of my attention back to making fonts for GNU. (Always assuming Micros**t hasn’t completely obliterated Unix by then, or that software patents haven’t stopped software development by anybody smaller than a company with a million-dollar-a-year legal budget. Which is actually what I think is likely to happen, but that’s another story…)

[Olaf writes.] At the end of 1997, Unix is still alive and kicking, individuals still develop software, and Web2c development still continues. Karl had been looking for some time for someone to take up part of the burden, and I volunteered.

[Karl writes again.] Indeed, time goes on. As of 2006 or so, Olaf’s available time for Kpathsea was reduced, and I started taking overall care of it again, although I did not do any significant new development. In 2009, Taco Hoekwater implemented a major rearrangement to make the library suitable for use within the MetaPost library (see Programming overview). Also, for some years now, Peter Breitenlohner has made many improvements to the infrastructure and kept it up-to-date with respect to the overall TeX Live build, where Kpathsea is now maintained.

## 2 `unixtex.ftp`: Obtaining TeX ¶

This is ftp://tug.org/tex/unixtex.ftp, a.k.a. https://tug.org/unixtex.ftp, last updated 29 February 2020. Email tex-k@tug.org with comments or questions.

The principal free TeX distribution for Unix-like systems is TeX Live, on the web at http://tug.org/texlive. The pages there describe many ways to acquire and/or build TeX, over the Internet or on physical media, both the sources and precompiled binaries for many systems, either standalone or as part of various operating system distributions.

Web2c, Kpathsea, Dvips, and Dviljk, among others, are no longer released as a separate packages. Their sources are now maintained as part of TeX Live.

The host `ftp.cs.stanford.edu` is the original source for the files for which Donald Knuth is directly responsible: `tex.web`, `plain.tex`, etc. However, unless you want to undertake the project of building your TeX system from scratch, it is more reliable and less work to retrieve these files as part of a larger package.

In any case, the Stanford ftp site is not the canonical source for anything except what was created as part of Knuth’s original TeX, so do not rely on any other files available there being up-to-date. The best place to check for up-to-date files is CTAN (the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network), https://ctan.org.

## 3 Security ¶

None of the programs in the TeX system require any special system privileges, so there’s no first-level security concern of people gaining illegitimate root access.

Thus, the general goal of our security measures is to make an untrusted TeX document safe to execute, in the sense of no document being able to change the system or user configuration, or transmit information to an attacker. Here are some of the steps that have been taken to make the TeX system safe in this regard:

- A TeX document can write to arbitrary files via `\openout`, e.g., `~/.profile`, and thus an unwitting user who runs TeX on an untrusted document is vulnerable to a trojan horse attack. This loophole is closed by default, but you can be permissive if you so desire in `texmf.cnf`; see the variable `openout_any`. See tex invocation in Web2c. MetaPost has the same issue (Metafont cannot write arbitrary files).
- Dvips, Xdvi, TeX, and others can execute shell commands. By default, only a handful of commands that are believed to be safe, to the best of our ability to check, are allowed. For the list, see the `shell_escape_commands` variable in `texmf.cnf` (see Shell escapes in Web2c). For more information, e.g., to disable this completely, see the ‘`-R`’ option in Option details in Dvips, the xdvi man page, and tex invocation in Web2c, respectively.
- LuaTeX is a special case. Since Lua is a general-purpose programming language, it has all the usual functionality for writing files, executing shell commands, opening network connections, and plenty more. When LuaTeX is used in its so-called “kpse” mode, as with LuaLaTeX, we have nevertheless done our best to also make it safe to execute by default, by disabling or restricting the various problematic Lua features. See Safe filenames, for a bit more about this. (When LuaTeX is run in non-kpse mode, as with ConTeXt MkIV, everything is allowed; thus, untrusted documents should not be processed.)
- There are some well-known ways to crash TeX, using arithmetic overflow, which Knuth deliberately left unchecked, and other nefarious constructs; some are listed at https://tug.org/texmfbug/nobug.html. While disturbing, TeX has no special system access and so these crashes don’t present a security risk.
- One more issue is the desire for a globally writable font cache directory; see the section below for this (Global font cache and security).

### 3.1 Global font cache and security ¶

It’s useful to make arbitrary fonts on user demand with `mktexpk` and friends. Where do these files get installed? By default, the `mktexpk` distributed with Kpathsea assumes a world-writable `/var/tmp` directory; this is a simple and convenient approach, but it does not suit all situations, because it means that a local cache of fonts is created on every user’s system.

To avoid this duplication, many people consider a shared, globally writable font tree desirable, in spite of the potential security problems. To do this you should change the value of `VARTEXFONTS` in `texmf.cnf` to refer to some globally known directory. See `mktex` configuration.

The first restriction you can apply is to make newly-created directories under `texmf` be append-only with an option in `mktex.cnf`. See `mktex` configuration.

Another approach is to establish a group (or user) for TeX files, make the `texmf` tree writable only to that group (or user), and make `mktexpk` et al. setgid to that group (or setuid to that user). Then users must invoke the scripts to install things. (If you’re worried about the likelihood of security holes in scripts, you could write a C wrapper to exec the script.)

The `mktex…` scripts install files with the same read and write permissions as the directory they are installed in. The executable, sgid, suid, and sticky bits are always cleared.

Any directories created by the `mktex…` scripts have the same permissions as their parent directory, unless the `appendonlydir` feature is used, in which case the sticky bit is always set.

Nowadays, with bitmap files rarely used, and with individual systems being so much more powerful, this is less of an issue than in the past. But the question still comes up occasionally.

## 4 TeX directory structure ¶

This section describes the default installation hierarchy of the distribution. It conforms to both the GNU coding standards and the TeX directory structure (TDS) standard. For rationale and further explanation, please see those documents. The GNU document is available from https://gnu.org/prep/standards. The TDS document is available from https://ctan.org/pkg/tds (see `unixtex.ftp`: Obtaining TeX).

In short, here is a skeleton of the default directory structure, extracted from the TDS document:

    prefix/      installation root (/usr/local by default)
     bin/         executables
     man/         man pages
     include/     C header files
     info/        GNU info files
     lib/         libraries (libkpathsea.*)
     share/       architecture-independent files
      texmf/      TDS root
       bibtex/     BibTeX input files
        bib/        BibTeX databases
         base/       base distribution (e.g., ‘xampl.bib’)
         misc/       single-file databases
         pkg/       name of a package
        bst/        BibTeX style files
         base/       base distribution (e.g., ‘plain.bst’, ‘acm.bst’)
         misc/       single-file styles
         pkg/       name of a package
       doc/         additional documentation
       dvips/       ‘.pro’, ‘.ps’, ‘psfonts.map’
       fonts/       font-related files
        type/         file type (e.g., ‘tfm’, ‘pk’)
         mode/          type of output device (types ‘pk’ and ‘gf’ only)
          supplier/       name of a font supplier (e.g., ‘public’)
           typeface/        name of a typeface (e.g., ‘cm’)
            dpinnn/           font resolution (types ‘pk’ and ‘gf’ only)
       metafont/    Metafont (non-font) input files
        base/        base distribution (e.g., ‘plain.mf’)
        misc/        single-file packages (e.g., ‘modes.mf’)
        pkg/           name of a package (e.g., ‘mfpic’)
       metapost/    MetaPost input files
        base/        base distribution (e.g., ‘plain.mp’)
        misc/        single-file packages
        pkg/           name of a package
        support/     support files for MetaPost-related utilities (e.g., ‘trfonts.map’)
       mft/         ‘MFT’ inputs (e.g., ‘plain.mft’)
       tex/         TeX input files
        format/         name of a format (e.g., ‘plain’)
         base/        base distribution for format (e.g., ‘plain.tex’)
         misc/        single-file packages (e.g., ‘webmac.tex’)
         local/       local additions to or local configuration files for format
         pkg/           name of a package (e.g., ‘graphics’, ‘mfnfss’)
        generic/     format-independent packages
         hyphen/      hyphenation patterns (e.g., ‘hyphen.tex’)
         images/      image input files (e.g., Encapsulated PostScript)
         misc/        single-file format-independent packages (e.g., ‘null.tex’).
         pkg/           name of a package (e.g., ‘babel’)
       web2c/        implementation-dependent files (.pool, .fmt, texmf.cnf, etc.)

Some concrete examples for most file types:

    /usr/local/bin/tex
    /usr/local/man/man1/xdvi.1
    /usr/local/info/kpathsea.info
    /usr/local/lib/libkpathsea.a
    /usr/local/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/base/plain.bst
    /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/cm/cmr10.600pk
    /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/source/public/pandora/pnr10.mf
    /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/public/cm/cmr10.tfm
    /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/type1/adobe/utopia/putr.pfa
    /usr/local/share/texmf/metafont/base/plain.mf
    /usr/local/share/texmf/metapost/base/plain.mp
    /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/plain/base/plain.tex
    /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex
    /usr/local/share/texmf/web2c/tex.pool
    /usr/local/share/texmf/web2c/tex.fmt
    /usr/local/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

## 5 Path searching ¶

This chapter describes the generic path searching mechanism Kpathsea provides. For information about searching for particular file types (e.g., TeX fonts), see the next chapter.

This section, with minor differences, has been translated into several other languages (Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, German, …) as part of the TeX Live guide; see https://tug.org/texlive/doc.html for links.

### 5.1 Searching overview ¶

A search path is a colon-separated list of path elements, which are directory names with a few extra frills. A search path can come from (a combination of) many sources; see below. To look up a file ‘`foo`’ along a path ‘`.:/dir`’, Kpathsea checks each element of the path in turn: first `./foo`, then `/dir/foo`, returning the first match (or possibly all matches).

The “colon” and “slash” mentioned here aren’t necessarily ‘`:`’ and ‘`/`’ on non-Unix systems. Kpathsea tries to adapt to other operating systems’ conventions.

To check a particular path element e, Kpathsea first sees if a prebuilt database (see Filename database (`ls-R`)) applies to e, i.e., if the database is in a directory that is a prefix of e. If so, the path specification is matched against the contents of the database.

If the database does not exist, or does not apply to this path element, or contains no matches, the filesystem is searched (if this was not forbidden by the specification with ‘`!!`’ and if the file being searched for must exist). Kpathsea constructs the list of directories that correspond to this path element, and then checks in each for the file being searched for. (To help speed future lookups of files in the same directory, the directory in which a file is found is floated to the top of the directory list.)

The “file must exist” condition comes into play with VF files and input files read by the TeX ‘`\openin`’ command. These files might very well not exist (consider `cmr10.vf`), and so it would be wrong to search the disk for them. Therefore, if you fail to update `ls-R` when you install a new VF file, it will not be found.

Each path element is checked in turn: first the database, then the disk. If a match is found, the search stops and the result is returned (unless the search explicitly requested all matches). This avoids possibly-expensive processing of path specifications that are never needed on a particular run.

On Unix-like systems, if no match is found by any of the above, and the path element allows checking the filesystem (per the above), a final check is made for a case-insensitive match. Thus, looking for a name like ‘`./FooBar.TeX`’ will match a file ‘`./foobar.tex`’, and vice versa. This is not done on Windows. See Casefolding search.

Although the simplest and most common path element is a directory name, Kpathsea supports additional features in search paths: layered default values, environment variable names, config file values, users’ home directories, and recursive subdirectory searching. Thus, we say that Kpathsea expands a path element, meaning transforming all the magic specifications into the basic directory name or names. This process is described in the sections below. It happens in the same order as the sections.

Exception to all of the above: If the filename being searched for is absolute or explicitly relative, i.e., starts with ‘`/`’ or ‘`./`’ or ‘`../`’, Kpathsea simply checks if that file exists, with a fallback to a casefolding match if needed and enabled, as described above.

Ordinarily, if Kpathsea tries to access a file or directory that cannot be read, it gives a warning. This is so you will be alerted to directories or files that accidentally lack any read permission (for example, a `lost+found` directory). If you prefer not to see these warnings, include the value ‘`readable`’ in the `TEX_HUSH` environment variable or config file value.

This generic path searching algorithm is implemented in `kpathsea/pathsearch.c`. It is employed by a higher-level algorithm when searching for a file of a particular type (see File lookup, and Glyph lookup).

### 5.2 Path sources ¶

A search path or other configuration value can come from many sources. In the order in which Kpathsea looks for them:

1. A command-line option such as `--cnf-line`, available in `kpsewhich` and most TeX engines. See Path searching options.

   A user-set environment variable, e.g., `TEXINPUTS`. Environment variables with an underscore and the program name appended override; for example, `TEXINPUTS_latex` overrides `TEXINPUTS` if the program being run is named ‘`latex`’.

2. A program-specific configuration file, e.g., an ‘`S /a:/b`’ line in Dvips’ `config.ps` (see Config files in Dvips).
3. A line in a Kpathsea configuration file `texmf.cnf`, e.g., ‘`TEXINPUTS=/c:/d`’ (see below).
4. The compile-time default (specified in `kpathsea/paths.h`).

You can see each of these values for a given search path by using the debugging options (see Debugging).

These sources may be combined via default expansion (see Default expansion).

#### 5.2.1 Config files ¶

As mentioned above, Kpathsea reads runtime configuration files named `texmf.cnf` for search path and other definitions. The search path used to look for these configuration files is named `TEXMFCNF`, and is constructed in the usual way, as described above, except that configuration files cannot be used to define the path, naturally; also, an `ls-R` database is not used to search for them.

Kpathsea reads all `texmf.cnf` files in the search path, not just the first one found; definitions in earlier files override those in later files. Thus, if the search path is ‘`.:$TEXMF`’, values from `./texmf.cnf` override those from `$TEXMF/texmf.cnf`.

If Kpathsea cannot find any `texmf.cnf` file, it reports a warning including all the directories it checked. If you don’t want to see this warning, set the environment variable `KPATHSEA_WARNING` to the single character ‘`0`’ (zero, not oh).

While (or instead of) reading this description, you may find it helpful to look at the distributed `texmf.cnf`, which uses or at least mentions most features. The format of `texmf.cnf` files follows:

- Comments start with ‘`%`’ or ‘`#`’, either at the beginning of a line or preceded by whitespace, and continue to the end of the line. That is, similar to most shells, a comment character in the “middle” of a value does not start a comment. Examples:

      % this is a comment
      var = a%b  % but the value of var will be "a%b"

- Blank lines are ignored.
- A ‘`\`’ at the end of a line acts as a continuation character, i.e., the next line is appended. Whitespace at the beginning of continuation lines is not ignored.
- Each remaining line will look like:

      variable [. progname] [=] value

  where the ‘`=`’ and surrounding whitespace is optional.

- The variable name may contain any character other than whitespace, ‘`=`’, or ‘`.`’, but sticking to ‘`A-Za-z_`’ is safest.
- If ‘`.progname`’ is present (preceding spaces are ignored), the definition only applies if the program that is running is named (i.e., the last component of `argv[0]` is) progname or `progname.{exe,bat,cmd,...}`. Most notably, this allows different flavors of TeX to have different search paths. The progname value is used literally, without variable or other expansions.
- Considered as strings, value may contain any character. However, in practice most `texmf.cnf` values are related to path expansion, and since various special characters are used in expansion, such as braces and commas, they cannot be used in directory names.

  The ‘`$var.prog`’ feature is not available on the right-hand side; instead, you must use an additional variable (see below for example).

  A ‘`;`’ in value is translated to ‘`:`’ if running under Unix, in order to have a single `texmf.cnf` that can support both Unix and Windows systems. This translation happens with any value, not just search paths, but fortunately in practice ‘`;`’ is not needed in other values.

- All definitions are read before anything is expanded, so you can use variables before they are defined (like Make, unlike most other programs).

Here is a configuration file fragment illustrating most of these points:

    % TeX input files -- i.e., anything to be found by \input or \openin ...
    latex209_inputs = .:$TEXMF/tex/latex209//:$TEXMF/tex//
    latex2e_inputs = .:$TEXMF/tex/latex//:$TEXMF/tex//
    TEXINPUTS = .:$TEXMF/tex//
    TEXINPUTS.latex209 = $latex209_inputs
    TEXINPUTS.latex2e = $latex2e_inputs
    TEXINPUTS.latex = $latex2e_inputs

The combination of spaces being ignored before the `.` of a program name qualifer and the optional ‘`=`’ for the assignment has an unexpected consequence: if the value begins with a literal ‘`.`’ and the ‘`=`’ is omitted, the intended value is interpreted as a program name. For example, a line `var .;/some/path` is taken as an empty value for `var` running under the program named ‘`;/some/path`’. To diagnose this, Kpathsea warns if the program name contains a path separator or other special character. The simplest way to avoid the problem is to use the `=`.

Exactly when a character will be considered special or act as itself depends on the context in which it is used. The rules are inherent in the multiple levels of interpretation of the configuration (parsing, expansion, search, …) and so cannot be concisely stated, unfortunately. There is no general escape mechanism; in particular, ‘`\`’ is not an “escape character” in `texmf.cnf` files. When it comes choosing directory names for installation, it is safest to avoid them all.

The implementation of all this is in `kpathsea/cnf.c`.

### 5.3 Path expansion ¶

Kpathsea recognizes certain special characters and constructions in search paths, similar to that in shells. As a general example: ‘`~$USER/{foo,bar}//baz`’ expands to all subdirectories under directories `foo` and `bar` in `$USER`’s home directory that contain a directory or file `baz`.

These expansions are explained in the sections below.

#### 5.3.1 Default expansion ¶

If the highest-priority search path (see Path sources) contains an extra colon (i.e., leading, trailing, or doubled), Kpathsea inserts at that point the next-highest-priority search path that is defined. If that inserted path has an extra colon, the same happens with the next-highest. (An extra colon in the compile-time default value has unpredictable results, so installers beware.)

For example, given an environment variable setting

    setenv TEXINPUTS /home/karl:

and a `TEXINPUTS` value from `texmf.cnf` of

    .:$TEXMF//tex

then the final value used for searching will be:

    /home/karl:.:$TEXMF//tex

Put another way, default expansion works on “formats” (search paths), and not directly on environment variables. Example, showing the trailing ‘`:`’ ignored in the first case and expanded in the second:

    $ env TTFONTS=/tmp: kpsewhich --expand-path '$TTFONTS'
    /tmp
    $ env TTFONTS=/tmp: kpsewhich --show-path=.ttf
    /tmp:.:/home/olaf/texmf/fonts/truetype//:...

Since Kpathsea looks for multiple configuration files, it would be natural to expect that (for example) an extra colon in `./texmf.cnf` would expand to the path in `$TEXMF/texmf.cnf`. Or, with Dvips’ configuration files, that an extra colon in `config.$PRINTER` would expand to the path in `config.ps`. This doesn’t happen. It’s not clear this would be desirable in all cases, and trying to devise a way to specify the path to which the extra colon should expand seemed truly baroque.

Technicality: Since it would be useless to insert the default value in more than one place, Kpathsea changes only one extra ‘`:`’ and leaves any others in place (they will eventually be ignored). Kpathsea checks first for a leading ‘`:`’, then a trailing ‘`:`’, then a doubled ‘`:`’.

You can trace this by debugging “paths” (see Debugging). Default expansion is implemented in the source file `kpathsea/kdefault.c`.

#### 5.3.2 Variable expansion ¶

‘`$foo`’ or ‘`${foo}`’ in a path element is replaced by (1) the value of an environment variable ‘`foo`’ (if defined); (2) the value of ‘`foo`’ from `texmf.cnf` (if defined); (3) the empty string.

If the character after the ‘`$`’ is alphanumeric or ‘`_`’, the variable name consists of all consecutive such characters. If the character after the ‘`$`’ is a ‘`{`’, the variable name consists of everything up to the next ‘`}`’ (braces may not be nested around variable names). Otherwise, Kpathsea gives a warning and ignores the ‘`$`’ and its following character.

You must quote the `$`’s and braces as necessary for your shell. Shell variable values cannot be seen by Kpathsea, i.e., ones defined by `set` in C shells and without `export` in Bourne shells.

For example, given

    setenv tex /home/texmf
    setenv TEXINPUTS .:$tex:${tex}prev

the final `TEXINPUTS` path is the three directories:

    .:/home/texmf:/home/texmfprev

The ‘`.progname`’ suffix on variables and ‘`_progname`’ on environment variable names are not implemented for general variable expansions. These are only recognized when search paths are initialized (see Path sources).

Variable expansion is implemented in the source file `kpathsea/variable.c`.

#### 5.3.3 Tilde expansion ¶

A leading ‘`~`’ in a path element is replaced by the value of the environment variable `HOME`, or `.` if `HOME` is not set. On Windows, the environment variable `USERPROFILE` is checked instead of `HOME`.

A leading ‘`~user`’ in a path element is replaced by user’s home directory from the system `passwd` database.

For example,

    setenv TEXINPUTS ~/mymacros:

will prepend a directory `mymacros` in your home directory to the default path.

As a special case, if a home directory ends in ‘`/`’, the trailing slash is dropped, to avoid inadvertently creating a ‘`//`’ construct in the path. For example, if the home directory of the user ‘`root`’ is ‘`/`’, the path element ‘`~root/mymacros`’ expands to just ‘`/mymacros`’, not ‘`//mymacros`’.

Tilde expansion is implemented in the source file `kpathsea/tilde.c`.

#### 5.3.4 Brace expansion ¶

‘`x{a,b}y`’ expands to ‘`xay:xby`’. For example:

    foo/{1,2}/baz

expands to ‘`foo/1/baz:foo/2/baz`’. ‘`:`’ is the path separator on the current system; e.g., on a Windows system, it’s ‘`;`’.

Braces can be nested; for example, ‘`x{A,B{1,2}}y`’ expands to ‘`xAy:xB1y:xB2y`’.

Multiple non-nested braces are expanded from right to left; for example, ‘`x{A,B}{1,2}y`’ expands to ‘`x{A,B}1y:x{A,B}2y`’, which expands to ‘`xA1y:xB1y:xA2y:xB2y`’.

This feature can be used to implement multiple TeX hierarchies, by assigning a brace list to `$TEXMF`, as mentioned in `texmf.in`.

You can also use the path separator instead of the comma. The last example could have been written ‘`x{A:B}{1:2}y`’ (on Unix).

Brace expansion is implemented in the source file `kpathsea/expand.c`.

#### 5.3.5 `KPSE_DOT` expansion ¶

When `KPSE_DOT` is defined in the environment, it names a directory that should be considered the current directory for the purpose of looking up files in the search paths. This feature is needed by the ‘`mktex…`’ scripts `mktex` scripts, because these change the working directory. You should not ever define it yourself.

#### 5.3.6 Subdirectory expansion ¶

Two or more consecutive slashes in a path element following a directory d is replaced by all subdirectories of d: first those subdirectories directly under d, then the subsubdirectories under those, and so on. At each level, the order in which the directories are searched is unspecified. (It’s “directory order”, and definitely not alphabetical.)

If you specify any filename components after the ‘`//`’, only subdirectories which match those components are included. For example, ‘`/a//b`’ would expand into directories `/a/1/b`, `/a/2/b`, `/a/1/1/b`, and so on, but not `/a/b/c` or `/a/1`.

You can include multiple ‘`//`’ constructs in the path.

‘`//`’ at the beginning of a path is ignored. Searching every directory on the system is not relevant for TeX.

We need to discuss one related implementation trick, originally taken from GNU find. Matthew Farwell suggested it, and David MacKenzie implemented it.

The trick is that in normal Unix implementations (though not in the POSIX specification), a directory which contains no subdirectories will have exactly two links (namely, one for `.` and one for `..`). That is to say, the `st_nlink` field in the ‘`stat`’ structure will be two. Thus, we don’t have to stat everything in the bottom-level (leaf) directories—we can just check `st_nlink`, notice it’s two, and do no more work.

Kpathsea never does this `st_nlink=2` check (or any disk checking) for `!!` trees (see `ls-R`). And the non-`!!` trees in a TeX Live installation are typically extremely small. Therefore the `st_nlink` check is not performed by default at all, as of 2025 (Kpathsea 6.3.4). That way, two not-uncommon situations work out: 1) all `gvisor`-handled filesystems return `st_nlink=1` before some post-2025 release (https://tug.org/pipermail/texhax/2025-July/026772.html); 2) a symbolic link to another directory in such an apparent leaf directory will get followed even though `st_nlink=2` (https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/132908).

If you have an extremely large non-`!!` tree, most likely `TEXMFHOME`, you may find it useful to enable the check: you can do this by setting the configuration variable `texmf_nlink_for_leaf` to 1. Alternatively, with such a large tree, you may find it even more useful to add the tree to `TEXMFDBS` so that only `ls-R` lookups are done (again, see `ls-R`).

Unfortunately, in some cases files in leaf directories are `stat`’d anyway: if the path specification is, say, ‘`$TEXMF/fonts//pk//`’, then files in a subdirectory ‘`…/pk`’, even if it is a leaf, are checked. The reason cannot be explained without reference to the implementation, so read `kpathsea/elt-dirs.c` (search for ‘`may descend`’) if you are curious. And if you find a way to solve the problem, please let me know.

Subdirectory expansion is implemented in the source file `kpathsea/elt-dirs.c`.

### 5.4 Casefolding search ¶

In Kpathsea version 6.3.0 (released with TeX Live 2018), a new fallback search was implemented on Unix-like systems, including Macs: for each path element in turn, if no match is found by the normal search, and the path element allows for checking the filesystem, a second check is made for a case-insensitive match.

This is enabled at compile-time on Unix systems, and enabled at runtime by setting the configuration variable `texmf_casefold_search`, to a true value, e.g., ‘`1`’; this is done by default in TeX Live.

#### 5.4.1 Casefolding rationale ¶

The purpose of the fallback casefolding search is to ease moving complex documents between case-insensitive (file)systems and case-sensitive ones. In particular, Apple decided to make the default filesystem on Macs be case-insensitive some years ago, and this has exacerbated a problem of people creating documents that use, say, an image under the name `foo.jpg`, while the actual file is named `foo.JPG` or `Foo.jpg`. It works on the Mac but if the document is transferred and run on a standard case-sensitive Unix (file)system, the file can’t be found, due only to differences in case.

This same problematic scenario has always existed on Windows, but for whatever reason, it has become much more common since Apple also went to a case-insensitive filesystem. Hence the relatively late change to the Kpathsea behavior.

The fallback case-insensitive search is omitted at compile-time on Windows, where (for practical purposes) all file names are case-insensitive at the kernel level, and so the normal search will already have definitively matched or not. Therefore, search results in unusual cases can be different on Windows and Unix—but this has always been true.

#### 5.4.2 Casefolding examples ¶

The casefolding implementation prefers exact matches to casefolded matches within a given path element, so as to retain most compatibility. Backward compatibility is not perfect, however, as a casefolded match may be found in an earlier path element than an exact match was previously found (see example #4 below). Still, preferring the match in the earlier element seemed potentially less confusing than otherwise, and is in fact consistent with past behavior on Windows. Since case mismatches are rare to begin with, and name collisions with respect only to case thus even more rare, the hope is that it will not cause difficulties in practice.

If it’s desirable in a given situation to have the exact same search behavior as previously, that can be accomplished by setting the configuration variable `texmf_casefold_search` to ‘`0`’ (see Path sources).

Some examples to illustrate the new behavior follow.

Example #1: suppose the file `./foobar.tex` exists. Now, searching for `./FooBar.TeX` (or any other case variation) will succeed, returning `./foobar.tex`—the name as stored on disk. In previous releases, or if `texmf_casefold_search` is false, the search would fail.

Example #2: suppose we are using a case-sensitive (file)system, and the search path is ‘`.:/somedir`’, and the files `./foobar.tex` and `/somedir/FooBar.TeX` both exist. Both now and previously, searching for `foobar.tex` returns `./foobar.tex`. However, searching for `FooBar.TeX` now returns `./foobar.tex` instead of `/somedir/FooBar.TeX`; this is the incompatibility mentioned above. Also (as expected), searching for `FOOBAR.TEX` (or whatever variation) will now return `./foobar.tex`, whereas before it would fail. Searching for all (‘`kpsewhich --all`’) `foobar.tex` will return both matches.

Example #3: same as example #2, but on a case-insensitive (file)system: both now and previously, searching for `FooBar.TeX` returns `./foobar.tex`, since the system considers that a match. The Kpathsea casefolding never comes into play.

Example #4: if we have (on a case-sensitive system) both `./foobar.tex` and `./FOOBAR.TEX`, searching with the exact case returns that exact match, now and previously. Searching for `FooBar.tex` will now return one or the other (chosen arbitrarily), rather than failing. Perhaps unexpectedly, searching for all `foobar.tex` or `FooBar.tex` will also return only one or the other, not both (see more below).

Example #5: the font file `STIX-Regular.otf` is included in TeX Live in the system directory `texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public/stix`. Because Kpathsea never searches the disk in the big system directory, the casefolding is not done, and a search for ‘`stix-regular.otf`’ will fail (on case-sensitive systems), as it always has.

The caveat about not searching the disk amounts to saying that casefolding does not happen in the trees specified with ‘`!!`’ (see `ls-R`), that is, where only database (`ls-R`) searching is done. In TeX Live, that is the ‘`texmf-local`’ and ‘`texmf-dist`’ trees (also `$TEXMFSYSCONFIG` and `$TEXMFSYSVAR`, but those are rarely noticed). The rationale for this is that in practice, case mangling happens with user-created files, not with packages distributed as part of the TeX system.

One more caveat: the purpose of `kpsewhich` is to exercise the path searching in Kpathsea as it is actually done. Therefore, as shown above, ‘`kpsewhich --all`’ will not return all matches regardless of case within a given path element. If you want to find all matches in all directories, `find` is the best tool, although the setup takes a couple steps:

    kpsewhich -show-path=tex >/tmp/texpath      # search path specification
    kpsewhich -expand-path="`cat /tmp/texpath`" >/tmp/texdirs  # all dirs
    tr ':' '\n' </tmp/texdirs >/tmp/texdirlist  # colons to newlines
    find `cat /tmp/texdirlist` -iname somefile.tex -print </tmp/texdirlist

Sorry that it’s annoyingly lengthy, but implementing this inside Kpathsea would be a lot of error-prone trouble for something that is only useful for debugging. If your `find` does not support `-iname`, you can get GNU Find from https://gnu.org/software/findutils.

The casefolding search is implemented in the source file `kpathsea/pathsearch.c`. Two implementation points:

- Kpathsea never tries to check if a given directory resides on a case-insensitive filesystem, because there is no efficient and portable way to do so. All it does is try to see if a potential file name is a readable normal file (with, usually, the `access` system call).
- Kpathsea does not do any case-insensitive matching of the directories along the path. It’s not going to find `/Some/Random/file.tex` when looking for `/some/random/file.tex`. The casefolding only happens with the elements of the leaf directory.

### 5.5 Filename database (`ls-R`) ¶

Kpathsea goes to some lengths to minimize disk accesses for searches (see Subdirectory expansion). Nevertheless, in practice searching every possible directory in typical TeX installations takes an excessively long time.

Therefore, Kpathsea can use an externally-built filename database file named `ls-R` that maps files to directories, thus avoiding the need to exhaustively search the disk.

A second database file `aliases` allows you to give additional names to the files listed in `ls-R`.

The `ls-R` and `aliases` features are implemented in the source file `kpathsea/db.c`.

#### 5.5.1 `ls-R` ¶

As mentioned above, you must name the main filename database `ls-R`. You can put one at the root of each TeX installation hierarchy you wish to search (`$TEXMF` by default, which expands to a braced list of several hierarchies in TeX Live).

Kpathsea looks for `ls-R` files along the `TEXMFDBS` path. It is best for this to contain all and only those hierarchies from `$TEXMF` which are specified with `!!`—and also to specify them with `!!` in `TEXMFDBS`. (See the end of this section for more on `!!`.)

The recommended way to create and maintain ‘`ls-R`’ is to run the `mktexlsr` script, which is installed in ‘`$(bindir)`’ (`/usr/local/bin` by default). That script goes to some trouble to follow symbolic links as necessary, etc. It’s also invoked by the distributed ‘`mktex…`’ scripts.

At its simplest, though, you can build `ls-R` with the command

    cd /your/texmf/root && ls -LAR ./ >ls-R

presuming your `ls` produces the right output format (see the section below). GNU `ls`, for example, outputs in this format. Also presuming your `ls` hasn’t been aliased in a system file (e.g., `/etc/profile`) to something problematic, e.g., ‘`ls --color=tty`’. In that case, you will have to disable the alias before generating `ls-R`. For the precise definition of the file format, see Database format.

Regardless of whether you use the supplied script or your own, you will almost certainly want to invoke it via `cron`, so when you make changes in the installed files (say if you install a new LaTeX package), `ls-R` will be automatically updated. However, for those using TeX Live or system distributions, the package managers should run `mktexlsr` as needed.

The ‘`-A`’ option to `ls` includes files beginning with ‘`.`’ (except for `.` and `..`), such as the file `.tex` included with the LaTeX tools package. (On the other hand, directories whose names begin with ‘`.`’ are always ignored.)

If your system does not support symbolic links, omit the ‘`-L`’.

`ls -LAR /your/texmf/root` will also work. But using ‘`./`’ avoids embedding absolute pathnames, so the hierarchy can be easily transported. It also avoids possible trouble with automounters or other network filesystem conventions.

Kpathsea warns you if it finds an `ls-R` file, but the file does not contain any usable entries. The usual culprit is running plain ‘`ls -R`’ instead of ‘`ls -LR ./`’ or ‘`ls -R /your/texmf/root`’. Another possibility is some system directory name starting with a ‘`.`’ (perhaps if you are using AFS); Kpathsea ignores everything under such directories.

If a particular path element begins with ‘`!!`’, only the database will be searched for that element, never the disk; and if the database does not exist, nothing at all will be searched. In TeX Live, most of the trees are specified with ‘`!!`’.

For path elements that do not begin with ‘`!!`’, if the database exists, it will be used, and the disk will not be searched. However, in this case, if the database does not exist, the disk will be searched. In TeX Live, the most notable case of this is the `TEXMFHOME` tree, to allow users to add and remove files from their own tree without having to worry about `ls-R`.

(Aside: there are uncommon cases where a ‘`!!`’ tree will be searched on disk even if the `ls-R` file exists; they are too obscure to try to explain here. See `pathsearch.c` in the source if you need to know.)

To sum up: do not create an `ls-R` file unless you also take care to keep it up to date. Otherwise newly-installed files will not be found.

#### 5.5.2 Filename aliases ¶

In some circumstances, you may wish to find a file under several names. For example, suppose a TeX document was created using a DOS system and tries to read `longtabl.sty`. But now it’s being run on a Unix system, and the file has its original name, `longtable.sty`. The file won’t be found. You need to give the actual file `longtable.sty` an alias ‘`longtabl.sty`’.

You can handle this by creating a file `aliases` as a companion to the `ls-R` for the hierarchy containing the file in question. (You must have an `ls-R` for the alias feature to work.)

The format of `aliases` is simple: two whitespace-separated words per line; the first is the real name `longtable.sty`, and second is the alias (`longtabl.sty`). These must be base filenames, with no directory components. `longtable.sty` must be in the sibling `ls-R`.

Also, blank lines and lines starting with ‘`%`’ or ‘`#`’ are ignored in `aliases`, to allow for comments.

If a real file `longtabl.sty` exists, it is used regardless of any aliases.

#### 5.5.3 Database format ¶

The “database” read by Kpathsea is a line-oriented file of plain text. The format is that generated by GNU (and most other) `ls` programs given the ‘`-R`’ option, as follows.

- Blank lines are ignored.
- If a line begins with ‘`/`’ or ‘`./`’ or ‘`../`’ and ends with a colon, it’s the name of a directory. (‘`../`’ lines aren’t useful, however, and should not be generated.)
- All other lines define entries in the most recently seen directory. `/`’s in such lines will produce possibly-strange results.
- Files with no preceding directory line are ignored.

For example, here’s the first few lines of `ls-R` (which totals about 30K bytes) on my system:

    bibtex
    dvips
    fonts
    ls-R
    metafont
    metapost
    tex
    web2c

    ./bibtex:
    bib
    bst
    doc

    ./bibtex/bib:
    asi.bib
    btxdoc.bib
    ...

### 5.6 `kpsewhich`: Standalone path searching ¶

The Kpsewhich program exercises the path searching functionality independent of any particular application. This can also be useful as a sort of `find` program to locate files in your TeX hierarchies, perhaps in administrative scripts. It is used heavily in the distributed ‘`mktex…`’ scripts.

Synopsis:

    kpsewhich option... filename...

The options and filename(s) to look up can be intermixed. Options can start with either ‘`-`’ or ‘`--`’, and any unambiguous abbreviation is accepted.

Kpsewhich looks up each non-option argument on the command line as a filename, and outputs (by default) the first file found to standard output. If a file is not found, and more than filename is given, a blank line is output for that file. See examples below.

The exit status is zero if all files were found, nonzero otherwise.

#### 5.6.1 `kpsewhich` examples ¶

Some examples of running `kpsewhich` with a typical TeX tree. A basic successful search (exit status 0):

    $ kpsewhich plain.tex
    /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/tex/plain/base/plain.tex

Searching for multiple files, one of which is not found (exit status is 1 for this):

    $ kpsewhich plain.tex foobar plain.mf
    /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/tex/plain/base/plain.tex

    /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/metafont/base/plain.mf

Using `--all` to see all files by the same name (exit status 0):

    $ kpsewhich --all language.dat
    /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/tex/generic/config/language.dat
    /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/lambda/generic/config/language.dat

#### 5.6.2 Path searching options ¶

Various options alter the path searching behavior. Options apply to all lookups.

‘`--all`’ ¶

  Report all matches found, one per line. By default, if there is more than one match, just one will be reported (chosen effectively at random). Exception: with the glyph formats (`pk`, `gf`), this option has no effect and only the first match is returned.

  With both `-all` and multiple input files, there’s no easy way to discern which matches belong to which files; you have to check the basename of the output. This could be improved, if there is any demand.

‘`--casefold-search`’ ¶
‘`--no-casefold-search`’

  Explicitly enable or disable the fallback to a case-insensitive search on Unix platforms (see Casefolding search); no effect on Windows. The default is enabled, set in `texmf.cnf`. Disabling (`--no-casefold-search`) does not mean that searches magically become case-sensitive when the underlying (file)system is case-insensitive, it merely means that Kpathsea does not do any casefolding itself.

‘`--cnf-line=str`’ ¶

  Parse str as if it were a line in the `texmf.cnf` configuration file (see Config files), overriding settings in the actual configuration files, and also in the environment (see Path sources). This is implemented by making any settings from str in the environment, overwriting any value already there. Thus, an extra colon in a ‘`--cnf-line`’ value will refer to the value from a configuration file, not a user-set environment variable.

  Furthermore, any variable set from str will also be set with the program name suffix. For example, `pdftex --cnf-line=TEXINPUTS=/foo:` will set both `TEXINPUTS` and `TEXINPUTS_pdftex` in the environment (and the value will be `/foo` followed by the setting from `texmf.cnf`, ignoring any user-set `TEXINPUTS`).

  This behavior is desirable because, in practice, many variables in the distributed `texmf.cnf` are program-specific, and the intuitive behavior is for values set on the command line with `--cnf-line` to override them.

‘`--dpi=num`’ ¶

  Set the resolution to num; this only affects ‘`gf`’ and ‘`pk`’ lookups. ‘`-D`’ is a synonym, for compatibility with Dvips. Default is 600.

‘`--engine=name`’ ¶

  Set the engine name to name. By default it is not set in `kpsewhich` (TeX engines set it to the appropriate string). The engine name is used in some search paths to allow files with the same name but used by different engines to coexist.

  In particular, since the memory dump files (`.fmt`/`.base`/`.mem`) are now stored in subdirectories named for the engine (`tex`, `pdftex`, `xetex`, etc.), you must specify an engine name in order to find them. For example, `cont-en.fmt` typically exists for both `pdftex` and `xetex`. With the default path settings, you can use ‘`--engine=/`’ to look for any dump file, regardless of engine; if a dump file exists for more than one engine, it’s indeterminate which one is returned. (The ‘`/`’ ends up specifying a normal recursive search along the path where the dumps are stored, namely ‘`$TEXMF/web2c{/$engine,}`’.)

‘`--format=name`’ ¶

  Set the format for lookup to name. By default, the format is guessed from the filename, with ‘`tex`’ being used if nothing else fits. The recognized filename extensions (including any leading ‘`.`’) are also allowable names.

  All formats also have a name, which is the only way to specify formats with no associated suffix. For example, for Dvips configuration files you can use ‘`--format="dvips config"`’. (The quotes are for the sake of the shell.)

  Here’s the current list of recognized names and the associated suffixes. See Supported file formats, for more information on each of these.

  The strings in parentheses are abbreviations recognized only by `kpsewhich` (not the underlying library calls). They are provided when it would otherwise require an argument containing a space to specify the format, to simplify quoting of calls from shells.

      gf: gf
      pk: pk
      bitmap font (bitmapfont):
      tfm: .tfm
      afm: .afm
      base: .base
      bib: .bib
      bst: .bst
      cnf: .cnf
      ls-R: ls-R ls-r
      fmt: .fmt
      map: .map
      mem: .mem
      mf: .mf
      mfpool: .pool
      mft: .mft
      mp: .mp
      mppool: .pool
      MetaPost support (mpsupport):
      ocp: .ocp
      ofm: .ofm .tfm
      opl: .opl  .pl
      otp: .otp
      ovf: .ovf .vf
      ovp: .ovp  .vpl
      graphic/figure:  .eps .epsi
      tex: .tex  .sty .cls .fd .aux .bbl .def .clo .ldf
      TeX system documentation (doc):
      texpool: .pool
      TeX system source (source, src):  .dtx .ins
      PostScript header (psheader):  .pro
      Troff fonts (trofffont):
      type1 fonts: .pfa .pfb
      vf: .vf
      dvips config (dvipsconfig):
      ist: .ist
      truetype fonts (truetype, ttf): .ttf .ttc .TTF .TTC .dfont
      type42 fonts (type42): .t42 .T42
      web2c files (web2c):
      other text files (othertext):
      other binary files (otherbin):
      misc fonts (miscfont):
      web: .web  .ch
      cweb: .w .web  .ch
      enc files (enc): .enc
      cmap files (cmap):
      subfont definition files (sfd): .sfd
      opentype fonts (opentype, otf): .otf .OTF
      pdftex config (pdftexconfig):
      lig files (lig): .lig
      texmfscripts:
      lua: .lua .luatex .luc .luctex .texlua .texluc .tlu
      font feature files (fea): .fea
      cid maps (cidmap): .cid .cidmap
      mlbib: .mlbib .bib
      mlbst: .mlbst .bst
      clua: .dll .so
      ris: .ris
      bltxml: .bltxml

  This option and ‘`--path`’ are mutually exclusive.

‘`--interactive`’ ¶

  After processing the command line, read additional filenames to look up from standard input.

‘`--mktex=filetype`’ ¶
‘`--no-mktex=filetype`’

  Turn on or off the ‘`mktex`’ script associated with filetype. Usual values for filetype are ‘`pk`’, ‘`mf`’, ‘`tex`’, and ‘`tfm`’. By default, all are off in Kpsewhich, even if they are enabled for TeX. This option implies setting `--must-exist`. See `mktex` scripts.

‘`--mode=string`’ ¶

  Set the mode name to string; this also only affects ‘`gf`’ and ‘`pk`’ lookups. No default: any mode will be found. See `mktex` script arguments.

‘`--must-exist`’ ¶

  Do everything possible to find the files, notably including searching the disk and running the ‘`mktex`’ scripts. By default, only the `ls-R` database is checked, in the interest of efficiency.

‘`--path=string`’ ¶

  Search along the path string (colon-separated as usual), instead of guessing the search path from the filename. ‘`//`’ and all the usual expansions are supported (see Path expansion). This option and ‘`--format`’ are mutually exclusive. To output the complete directory expansion of a path, instead of doing a one-shot lookup, see ‘`--expand-path`’ and ‘`--show-path`’ in the following section.

‘`--progname=name`’ ¶

  Set the program name to name; default is ‘`kpsewhich`’. This can affect the search paths via the ‘`.prognam`’ feature in configuration files (see Config files).

‘`--subdir=string`’ ¶

  Report only those matches whose directory part ends with string (compared literally, except case is ignored on a case-insensitive operating system). For example, suppose there are two matches for a given name:

      kpsewhich foo.sty
      ⇒ /some/where/foo.sty
      /another/place/foo.sty

  Then we can narrow the result to what we are interested in with `--subdir`:

      kpsewhich --subdir=where foo.sty
      ⇒ /some/where/foo.sty

      kpsewhich --subdir=place foo.sty
      ⇒ /another/place/foo.sty

  The string to match must be at the end of the directory part of the match, and it is taken literally, with no pattern matching:

      kpsewhich --subdir=another foo.sty
      ⇒

  The string to match may cross directory components:

      kpsewhich --subdir=some/where foo.sty
      ⇒ /some/where/foo.sty

  `--subdir` implies `--all`; if there is more than one match, they will all be reported (in our example, both ‘`where`’ and ‘`place`’ end in ‘`e`’):

      kpsewhich --subdir=e
      ⇒ /some/where/foo.sty
      /another/place/foo.sty

  Because of the above rules, the presence of a leading ‘`/`’ is important, since it “anchors” the match to a full component name:

      kpsewhich --subdir=/lace foo.sty
      ⇒

  However, a trailing ‘`/`’ is immaterial (and ignored), since the match always takes place at the end of the directory part:

      kpsewhich --subdir=lace/ foo.sty
      ⇒ /another/place/foo.sty

  The purpose of these rules is to make it convenient to find results only within a particular area of the tree. For instance, a given script named `foo.lua` might exist within both `texmf-dist/scripts/pkg1/` and `texmf-dist/scripts/pkg2/`. By specifying, say, ‘`--subdir=/pkg1`’, you can be sure of getting the one you are interested in.

  We only match at the end because a site might happen to install TeX in `/some/coincidental/pkg1/path/`, and we wouldn’t want to match `texmf-dist/scripts/pkg2/` that when searching for ‘`/pkg1`’.

#### 5.6.3 Specially-recognized files for `kpsewhich` ¶

`kpsewhich` recognizes a few special filenames on the command line and defaults to using the ‘known’ file formats for them, merely to save the time and trouble of specifying the format. This is only a feature of `kpsewhich`; when using the Kpathsea library itself, none of these special filenames are recognized, and it’s still up to the caller to specify the desired format.

Here is the list of special filenames to `kpsewhich`, along with their corresponding format:

`config.ps` ¶

  `dvips config`

`dvipdfmx.cfg` ¶

  ‘`other text files`’

`fmtutil.cnf` ¶

  ‘`web2c files`’

`glyphlist.txt` ¶

  ‘`map`’

`mktex.cnf` ¶

  ‘`web2c files`’

`pdfglyphlist.txt` ¶

  ‘`map`’

`pdftex.cfg` ¶

  ‘`pdftex config`’ (although `pdftex.cfg` is not used any more; look for the file `pdftexconfig.tex` instead.)

`texmf.cnf` ¶

  ‘`cnf`’

`XDvi` ¶

  ‘`other text files`’

A user-specified format will override the above defaults.

Another reference for information about TeX’s many special files is `tcfmgr.map`, found in `texmf/texconfig/tcfmgr.map`, which records various information about the above configuration files (among others).

#### 5.6.4 Auxiliary tasks ¶

Kpsewhich provides some features in addition to path lookup as such:

‘`--debug=num`’ ¶

  Set debugging options to num. See Debugging.

‘`--expand-braces=string`’ ¶

  Output variable, tilde, and brace expansion of string, which is assumed to be a single path element. See Path expansion.

‘`--expand-path=string`’ ¶

  Output the complete expansion of string, with each element separated by the usual path separator on the current system (‘`;`’ on Windows, ‘`:`’ otherwise). This may be useful to construct a custom search path for a format not otherwise supported. To retrieve the search path for a format that is already supported, see ‘`--show-path`’.

  Nonexistent directories are culled from the output:

      $ kpsewhich --expand-path '/tmp'
      ⇒ /tmp
      $ kpsewhich --expand-path '/nonesuch'
      ⇒

  For one-shot uses of an arbitrary (not built in to Kpathsea) path, see ‘`--path`’ (see Path searching options).

‘`--expand-var=string`’ ¶

  Output the variable and tilde expansion of string. For example, with the usual `texmf.cnf`, ‘`kpsewhich --expand-var='$TEXMF'`’ returns the TeX system hierarchy root(s). See Path expansion. The specified string can contain anything, though, not just variable references. This calls `kpse_var_expand` (see Programming with config files).

‘`--help-formats`’ ¶

  Output information about each supported format (see Supported file formats), including the names and abbreviations, variables looked for, and the original path.

‘`--safe-extended-in-name=name`’ ¶
‘`--safe-extended-out-name=name`’

  As with ‘`--safe-in-name`’ and ‘`--safe-out-name`’ (next item), but also allow files under the variables `TEXMFVAR` and `TEXMFSYSVAR` (see Calling sequence).

‘`--safe-in-name=name`’ ¶
‘`--safe-out-name=name`’

  Exit successfully if name is safe to open for reading or writing, respectively, else unsuccessfully. No errors are output. These tests take account of the related Kpathsea configuration settings (see Calling sequence).

‘`--show-path=name`’ ¶

  Show the path that would be used for file lookups of file type name. Either a filename extension (‘`pk`’, ‘`.vf`’, etc.) or an integer can be used, just as with ‘`--format`’, described in the previous section.

‘`--var-brace-value=variable`’ ¶

  Like ‘`--var-value`’ (next), but also expands ‘`{...}`’ constructs. (see Brace expansion). Thus, the value is assumed to possibly be several path elements, and ‘`~`’ is expanded at the beginning of each. The path separator is changed to that of the current system in the expansion.

  Example: ‘`FOO='.;~' kpsewhich --var-brace-value=FOO`’ outputs (on a Unix-ish system) ‘`.:/home/karl`’, supposing the latter is the current user’s home directory. Note that the ‘`;`’ in the source value, as commonly used in `texmf.cnf`, has changed to a ‘`:`’, as the normal path separator on the current system. On a Windows-ish system, the ‘`;`’ would remain.

‘`--var-value=variable`’ ¶

  Outputs the value of variable (a simple identifier like ‘`TEXMFDIST`’, with no ‘`$`’ or other constructs), expanding ‘`$`’ (see Variable expansion) and ‘`~`’ (see Tilde expansion) constructs in the value. ‘`~`’ expansion happens at the beginning of the overall value and at the beginning of a variable expansion, but not arbitrarily within the string. Braces are not expanded.

  Example: ‘`--var-value=texmf_casefold_search`’ outputs (if the default is not changed) ‘`1`’.

  Example to contrast with ‘`--var-brace-value`’: ‘`FOO='.;~' kpsewhich --var-value=FOO`’ outputs ‘`.;~`’, i.e., the same as the input value, on all systems.

#### 5.6.5 Standard options ¶

Kpsewhich accepts the standard GNU options:

- ‘`--help`’ prints a help message on standard output and exits successfully.
- ‘`--version`’ prints the Kpathsea version number and exits successfully.

## 6 TeX support ¶

Although the basic features in Kpathsea can be used for any type of path searching, it came about, as usual, with a specific application in mind: I wrote Kpathsea specifically for TeX system programs. I had been struggling with the programs I was using (Dvips, Xdvi, and TeX itself) having slightly different notions of how to specify paths; and debugging was painful, since no code was shared.

Therefore, Kpathsea provides some TeX-specific formats and features. Indeed, many of the purportedly generic path searching features were provided because they seemed useful in that conTeXt (font lookup, particularly).

Kpathsea provides a standard way to search for files of any of the supported file types; glyph fonts are a bit different than all the rest. Searches are based solely on names of files, not their contents—if a GF file is (mis)named `cmr10.600pk`, it will be found as a PK file.

### 6.1 Supported file formats ¶

Kpathsea has support for a number of file types. Each file type has a list of environment and config file variables that are checked to define the search path, and most have a default suffix that plays a role in finding files (see the next section). Some also define additional suffixes, and/or a program to be run to create missing files on the fly.

Since environment variables containing periods, such as ‘`TEXINPUTS.latex`’, are not allowed on some systems, Kpathsea looks for environment variables with an underscore, e.g., ‘`TEXINPUTS_latex`’ (see Config files).

The following table lists the above information. You can also get the list by giving the ‘`--help-formats`’ option to `kpsewhich` (see Auxiliary tasks).

‘`afm`’ ¶

  (Adobe font metrics, see Metric files in Dvips) `AFMFONTS`; suffix ‘`.afm`’.

‘`base`’ ¶

  (Metafont memory dump, see Memory dumps in Web2c) `MFBASES`, `TEXMFINI`; suffix ‘`.base`’.

‘`bib`’ ¶

  (BibTeX bibliography source, see bibtex invocation in Web2c) `BIBINPUTS`, `TEXBIB`; suffix ‘`.bib`’.

‘`bltxml`’ ¶

  (BibLaTeXML bibliography files for Biber, https://ctan.org/pkg/biber) `BLTXMLINPUTS` suffix ‘`.bltxml`’.

‘`bst`’ ¶

  (BibTeX style, see Basic BibTeX style files in Web2c) `BSTINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.bst`’.

‘`clua`’ ¶

  (dynamic libraries for Lua, https://ctan.org/pkg/luatex) `CLUAINPUTS` suffixes ‘`.dll`’ and ‘`.so`’.

‘`cmap`’ ¶

  (character map files) `CMAPFONTS`; suffix ‘`.cmap`’.

‘`cnf`’ ¶

  (Runtime configuration files, see Config files) `TEXMFCNF`; suffix ‘`.cnf`’.

‘`cweb`’ ¶

  (CWEB input files) `CWEBINPUTS`; suffixes ‘`.w`’, ‘`.web`’; additional suffix ‘`.ch`’.

‘`dvips config`’ ¶

  (Dvips ‘`config.*`’ files, such as `config.ps`, see Config files in Dvips) `TEXCONFIG`.

‘`enc files`’ ¶

  (encoding vectors) `ENCFONTS`; suffix ‘`.enc`’.

‘`fmt`’ ¶

  (TeX memory dump, see Memory dumps in Web2c) `TEXFORMATS`, `TEXMFINI`; suffix ‘`.fmt`’.

‘`font cid map`’ ¶

  (CJK mapping) `FONTCIDMAPS` suffix ‘`.cid`’.

‘`font feature files`’ ¶

  (primarily for OpenType font features) `FONTFEATURES` suffix ‘`.fea`’.

‘`gf`’ ¶

  (generic font bitmap, see Glyph files in Dvips) `programFONTS`, `GFFONTS`, `GLYPHFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`gf`’.

‘`graphic/figure`’ ¶

  (Encapsulated PostScript figures, see PostScript figures in Dvips) `TEXPICTS`, `TEXINPUTS`; additional suffixes: ‘`.eps`’, ‘`.epsi`’.

‘`ist`’ ¶

  (makeindex style files) `TEXINDEXSTYLE`, `INDEXSTYLE`; suffix ‘`.ist`’.

‘`lig files`’ ¶

  (ligature definition files) `LIGFONTS`; suffix ‘`.lig`’.

‘`ls-R`’ ¶

  (Filename databases, see Filename database (`ls-R`)) `TEXMFDBS`.

‘`lua`’ ¶

  (Lua scripts, https://ctan.org/pkg/luatex) `LUAINPUTS` suffixes ‘`.lua`’, ‘`.luatex`’, ‘`.luc`’, ‘`.luctex`’, ‘`.texlua`’, ‘`.texluc`’, ‘`.tlu`’.

‘`map`’ ¶

  (Fontmaps, see Fontmap) `TEXFONTMAPS`; suffix ‘`.map`’.

‘`mem`’ ¶

  (MetaPost memory dump, see Memory dumps in Web2c) `MPMEMS`, `TEXMFINI`; suffix ‘`.mem`’.

‘`MetaPost support`’ ¶

  (MetaPost support files, used by DMP; see dmp invocation in Web2c) `MPSUPPORT`.

‘`mf`’ ¶

  (Metafont source, see mf invocation in Web2c) `MFINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.mf`’; dynamic creation program: `mktexmf`.

‘`mfpool`’ ¶

  (Metafont program strings, see pooltype invocation in Web2c) `MFPOOL`, `TEXMFINI`; suffix ‘`.pool`’.

‘`mft`’ ¶

  (`MFT` style file, see mft invocation in Web2c) `MFTINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.mft`’.

‘`misc fonts`’ ¶

  (font-related files that don’t fit the other categories) `MISCFONTS`

‘`mlbib`’ ¶

  (MlBibTeX bibliography source) `MLBIBINPUTS`, `BIBINPUTS`, `TEXBIB`; suffixes ‘`.mlbib`’, ‘`.mlbib`’.

‘`mlbst`’ ¶

  (MlBibTeX style) `MLBSTINPUTS`, `BSTINPUTS`; suffixes ‘`.mlbst`’, ‘`.bst`’.

‘`mp`’ ¶

  (MetaPost source, see mpost invocation in Web2c) `MPINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.mp`’.

‘`mppool`’ ¶

  (MetaPost program strings, see pooltype invocation in Web2c) `MPPOOL`, `TEXMFINI`; suffix ‘`.pool`’.

‘`ocp`’ ¶

  (Omega compiled process files) `OCPINPUTS`;
  suffix ‘`.ocp`’; dynamic creation program: `MakeOmegaOCP`.

‘`ofm`’ ¶

  (Omega font metrics) `OFMFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`;
  suffixes ‘`.ofm`’, ‘`.tfm`’; dynamic creation program: `MakeOmegaOFM`.

‘`opentype fonts`’ ¶

  (OpenType fonts) `OPENTYPEFONTS`.

‘`opl`’ ¶

  (Omega property lists) `OPLFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`.opl`’.

‘`otp`’ ¶

  (Omega translation process files) `OTPINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.otp`’.

‘`ovf`’ ¶

  (Omega virtual fonts) `OVFFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`.ovf`’.

‘`ovp`’ ¶

  (Omega virtual property lists) `OVPFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`.ovp`’.

‘`pdftex config`’ ¶

  (PDFTeX-specific configuration files) `PDFTEXCONFIG`.

‘`pk`’ ¶

  (packed bitmap fonts, see Glyph files in Dvips) `PROGRAMFONTS` (program being ‘`XDVI`’, etc.), `PKFONTS`, `TEXPKS`, `GLYPHFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`pk`’; dynamic creation program: `mktexpk`.

‘`PostScript header`’ ¶

  (downloadable PostScript, see Header files in Dvips) `TEXPSHEADERS`, `PSHEADERS`; additional suffix ‘`.pro`’.

‘`ris`’ ¶

  (RIS bibliography files, primarily for Biber, https://ctan.org/pkg/biber) `RISINPUTS` suffix ‘`.ris`’.

‘`subfont definition files`’ ¶

  (subfont definition files) `SFDFONTS` suffix ‘`.sfd`’.

‘`tex`’ ¶

  (TeX source, see tex invocation in Web2c) `TEXINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.tex`’; additional suffixes: none, because such a list cannot be complete; dynamic creation program: `mktextex`.

‘`TeX system documentation`’ ¶

  (Documentation files for the TeX system) `TEXDOCS`.

‘`TeX system sources`’ ¶

  (Source files for the TeX system) `TEXSOURCES`.

‘`texmfscripts`’ ¶

  (Architecture-independent executables distributed in the texmf trees) `TEXMFSCRIPTS`.

‘`texpool`’ ¶

  (TeX program strings, see pooltype invocation in Web2c) `TEXPOOL`, `TEXMFINI`; suffix ‘`.pool`’.

‘`tfm`’ ¶

  (TeX font metrics, see Metric files in Dvips) `TFMFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`.tfm`’; dynamic creation program: `mktextfm`.

‘`Troff fonts`’ ¶

  (Troff fonts, used by DMP; see DMP invocation in Web2c) `TRFONTS`.

‘`truetype fonts`’ ¶

  (TrueType outline fonts) `TTFONTS`; suffixes ‘`.ttf`’ and ‘`.TTF`’, ‘`.ttc`’ and ‘`.TTC`’, ‘`.dfont`’.

‘`type1 fonts`’ ¶

  (Type 1 PostScript outline fonts, see Glyph files in Dvips) `T1FONTS`, `T1INPUTS`, `TEXPSHEADERS`, `DVIPSHEADERS`; suffixes ‘`.pfa`’, ‘`.pfb`’.

‘`type42 fonts`’ ¶

  (Type 42 PostScript outline fonts) `T42FONTS`.

‘`vf`’ ¶

  (virtual fonts, see Virtual fonts in Dvips) `VFFONTS`, `TEXFONTS`; suffix ‘`.vf`’.

‘`web`’ ¶

  (WEB input files) `WEBINPUTS`; suffix ‘`.web`’; additional suffix ‘`.ch`’.

‘`web2c files`’ ¶

  (files specific to the web2c implementation) `WEB2C`.

There are two special cases, because the paths and environment variables always depend on the name of the program: the variable name is constructed by converting the program name to upper case, and then appending ‘`INPUTS`’. Assuming the program is called ‘`foo`’, this gives us the following table.

‘`other text files`’ ¶

  (text files used by ‘`foo`’) `FOOINPUTS`.

‘`other binary files`’ ¶

  (binary files used by ‘`foo`’) `FOOINPUTS`.

If an environment variable by these names are set, the corresponding `texmf.cnf` definition won’t be looked at (unless, as usual, the environment variable value has an extra ‘`:`’). See Default expansion.

For the font variables, the intent is that:

- `TEXFONTS` is the default for everything.
- `GLYPHFONTS` is the default for bitmap (or, more precisely, non-metric) files.
- Each font format has a variable of its own.
- Each program has its own font override path as well; e.g., `DVIPSFONTS` for Dvipsk. Again, this is for bitmaps, not metrics.

### 6.2 File lookup ¶

This section describes how Kpathsea searches for most files (bitmap font searches are the exception, as described in the next section).

Here is the search strategy for a file name:

1. If the file format defines default suffixes, and the suffix of name name is not already a known suffix for that format, try the name with each default appended, and use alternative names found in the fontmaps if necessary. Example: given ‘`foo.bar`’, look for ‘`foo.bar.tex`’.
2. Search for name, and if necessary for alternative names found in the fontmaps. Example: given ‘`foo.bar`’, we also look for ‘`foo.bar`’.
3. If the file format defines a program to invoke to create missing files, run it (see `mktex` scripts).

The order in which we search for “suffixed” name (item 1) or the “as-is” name (item 2) is controlled by the `try_std_extension_first` configuration value. The default set in `texmf.cnf` is true, since common suffixes are already recognized: ‘`babel.sty`’ will only look for ‘`babel.sty`’, not ‘`babel.sty.tex`’, regardless of this setting.

When the suffix is unknown (e.g., ‘`foo.bar`’), both names are always tried; the difference is the order in which they are tried.

`try_std_extension_first` only affects names being looked up which *already* have an extension. A name without an extension (e.g., ‘`tex story`’) will always have an extension added first.

This algorithm is implemented in the function `kpathsea_find_file` in the source file `kpathsea/tex-file.c`. You can watch it in action with the debugging options (see Debugging).

### 6.3 Glyph lookup ¶

This section describes how Kpathsea searches for a bitmap font in GF or PK format (or either) given a font name (e.g., ‘`cmr10`’) and a resolution (e.g., 600).

Here is an outline of the search strategy (details in the sections below) for a file name at resolution dpi. The search stops at the first successful lookup.

1. Look for an existing file name.dpiformat in the specified format(s).
2. If name is an alias for a file f in the fontmap file `texfonts.map`, look for f.dpi.
3. Run an external program (typically named ‘`mktexpk`’) to generate the font (see `mktex` scripts)
4. Look for fallback.dpi, where fallback is some last-resort font (typically ‘`cmr10`’).

This is implemented in `kpathsea_find_glyph` in `kpathsea/tex-glyph.c`.

#### 6.3.1 Basic glyph lookup ¶

When Kpathsea looks for a bitmap font name at resolution dpi in a format format, it first checks each directory in the search path for a file ‘`name.dpiformat`’; for example, ‘`cmr10.600pk`’. Kpathsea looks for a PK file first, then a GF file.

If that fails, Kpathsea looks for ‘`dpidpi/name.format`’; for example, ‘`dpi600/cmr10.pk`’. This is how fonts are typically stored on filesystems (such as DOS) that permit only three-character extensions.

If that fails, Kpathsea looks for a font with a close-enough dpi. “Close enough” is defined by the macro `KPSE_BITMAP_TOLERANCE` in `kpathsea/tex-glyph.h` to be `dpi / 500 + 1`. This is slightly more than the 0.2% minimum allowed by the DVI standard (CTAN:/dviware/driv-standard/level-0).

#### 6.3.2 Fontmap ¶

If a bitmap font or metric file is not found with the original name (see the previous section), Kpathsea looks through any fontmap files for an alias for the original font name. These files are named `texfonts.map` and searched for along the `TEXFONTMAPS` environment/config file variable. All `texfonts.map` files that are found are read; earlier definitions override later ones.

This feature is intended to help in two respects:

1. An alias name is limited in length only by available memory, not by your filesystem. Therefore, if you want to ask for ‘`Times-Roman`’ instead of `ptmr`, you can (you get ‘`ptmr8r`’).
2. A few fonts have historically had multiple names: specifically, LaTeX’s “circle font” has variously been known as `circle10`, `lcircle10`, and `lcirc10`. Aliases can make all the names equivalent, so that it no longer matters what the name of the installed file is; TeX documents will find their favorite name.

The format of fontmap files:

- Comments start with the last ‘`%`’ on a line and continue to the end of the line. (This provides for names that include a %, ill-advised as that may be.)
- Blank lines are ignored.
- Each nonblank line is broken up into a series of words: a sequence of non-whitespace characters.
- If the first word is ‘`include`’, the second word is used as a filename, and it is searched for and read.
- Otherwise, the first word on each line is the true filename;
- the second word is the alias;
- subsequent words are ignored.

If an alias has an extension, it matches only those files with that extension; otherwise, it matches anything with the same root, regardless of extension. For example, an alias ‘`foo.tfm`’ matches only when `foo.tfm` is being searched for; but an alias ‘`foo`’ matches `foo.vf`, `foo.600pk`, etc.

As an example, here is an excerpt from the `texfonts.map` in the Web2c distribution. It makes the old and new names of the LaTeX circle fonts equivalent.

    circle10        lcircle10
    circle10        lcirc10
    lcircle10       circle10
    lcircle10       lcirc10
    lcirc10         circle10
    lcirc10         lcircle10
    ...

Fontmaps are implemented in the file `kpathsea/fontmap.c`. The Fontname distribution has much more information on font naming (see Filenames for TeX fonts).

#### 6.3.3 Fallback font ¶

If a bitmap font cannot be found or created at the requested size, Kpathsea looks for the font at a set of fallback resolutions. You specify these resolutions as a colon-separated list (like search paths). Kpathsea looks first for a program-specific environment variable (e.g., `DVIPSSIZES` for Dvipsk), then the environment variable `TEXSIZES`, then a default specified at compilation time (the Make variable `default_texsizes`). You can set this list to be empty if you prefer to find fonts at their stated size or not at all.

Finally, if the font cannot be found even at the fallback resolutions, Kpathsea looks for a fallback font, typically `cmr10`. Programs must enable this feature by calling `kpathsea_init_prog` (see Calling sequence); the default is no fallback font.

### 6.4 Suppressing warnings ¶

Kpathsea provides a way to suppress selected usually-harmless warnings; this is useful at large sites where most users are not administrators, and thus the warnings are merely a source of confusion, not a help. To do this, you set the environment variable or configuration file value `TEX_HUSH` to a colon-separated list of values. Here are the possibilities:

‘`all`’ ¶

  Suppress everything possible.

‘`checksum`’ ¶

  Suppress mismatched font checksum warnings.

‘`lostchar`’ ¶

  Suppress warnings when a character is missing from a font that a DVI or VF file tries to typeset.

‘`none`’ ¶

  Don’t suppress any warnings.

‘`readable`’ ¶

  Suppress warnings about attempts to access a file whose permissions render it unreadable.

‘`special`’ ¶

  Suppresses warnings about an unimplemented or unparsable ‘`\special`’ command.

`tex-hush.c` defines the function that checks the variable value. Each driver implements its own checks where appropriate.

### 6.5 `mktex` scripts ¶

If Kpathsea cannot otherwise find a file, for some file types it is configured by default to invoke an external program to create it dynamically (see `mktex` configuration). These are collectively known as `mktex` scripts, since most of them are named `mktex...`.

For example, this is useful for fonts (bitmaps, TFM’s, and arbitrarily-sizable Metafont sources such as the Sauter and EC fonts), since any given document can use fonts never before referenced. Building all fonts in advance is therefore impractical, if not impossible.

It is also useful for the TeX ‘`.fmt`’ (and Metafont ‘`.base`’ and Metapost ‘`.mem`’ files, see Memory dumps in web2c), where pre-generating every format consumes a lot of both time and space.

The script is passed the name of the file to create and possibly other arguments, as explained below. It must echo the full pathname of the file it created (and nothing else) to standard output; it can write diagnostics to standard error.

#### 6.5.1 `mktex` configuration ¶

The list of file types and program names that can run an external program to create missing files is listed in the next section. In the absence of `configure` options specifying otherwise, everything but `mktextex` will be enabled by default. The `configure` options to change the defaults are:

    --without-mktexfmt-default
    --without-mktexmf-default
    --without-mktexocp-default
    --without-mktexofm-default
    --without-mktexpk-default
    --without-mktextfm-default
    --with-mktextex-default

The `configure` setting is overridden if the environment variable or configuration file value named for the script is set; e.g., `MKTEXPK` (see `mktex` script arguments).

`mktexfmt` reads a file `fmtutil.cnf`, typically located in `texmf/web2c/` to glean its configuration information. The rest of the files and features in this section are primarily intended for the font generation scripts.

As distributed, all the scripts source a file `texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf` if it exists, so you can override various defaults. See `mktex.opt`, for instance, which defines the default mode, resolution, some special directory names, etc. If you prefer not to change the distributed scripts, you can simply create `mktex.cnf` with the appropriate definitions (you do not need to create it if you have nothing to put in it). `mktex.cnf` has no special syntax; it’s an arbitrary Bourne shell script. The distribution contains a sample `mktex.cnf` for you to copy and modify as you please (it is not installed anywhere).

In addition, you can configure a number of features with the `MT_FEATURES` variable, which you can define:

- in `mktex.opt`, as just mentioned;
- by editing the file `mktex.opt`, either before ‘`make install`’ (in the source hierarchy) or after (in the installed hierarchy);
- or in the environment.

If none of the options below are enabled, `mktexpk`, `mktextfm`, and `mktexmf` follow the following procedure to decide where fonts should be installed. Find the tree where the font’s sources are, and test the permissions of the ‘`fonts`’ directory of that tree to determine whether it is writable. If it is, put the files in the tree in appropriate locations. If it isn’t writable, see whether the tree is a system tree (named in `SYSTEXMF`). If so, the `VARTEXFONTS` tree is used. In all other cases the working directory is used.

The ‘`appendonlydir`’ option is enabled by default.

‘`appendonlydir`’ ¶

  Tell `mktexdir` to create directories append-only, i.e., set their sticky bit (see Mode Structure in GNU Core Utilities). This feature is silently ignored on non-Unix platforms (e.g. Windows/NT and MS-DOS) which don’t support similar functionality. This feature is enabled by default.

‘`dosnames`’ ¶

  Use 8.3 names; e.g., `dpi600/cmr10.pk` instead of `cmr10.600pk`. Note that this feature only affects filenames that would otherwise clash with other TeX-related filenames; `mktex` scripts do nothing about filenames which exceed the 8+3 MS-DOS limits but remain unique when truncated (by the OS) to these limits, and nether do the scripts care about possible clashes with files which aren’t related with TeX. For example, `cmr10.600pk` would clash with `cmr10.600gf` and is therefore changed when ‘`dosnames`’ is in effect, but `mf.pool` and `mp.base` don’t clash with any TeX-related files and are therefore unchanged.

  This feature is turned on by default on MS-DOS. If you do not wish ‘`dosnames`’ to be set on an MS-DOS platform, you need to set the `MT_FEATURES` environment variable to a value that doesn’t include ‘`dosnames`’. You can also change the default setting by editing `mktex.opt`, but only if you use the `mktex` shell scripts; the emulation programs don’t consult `mktex.opt`.

‘`fontmaps`’ ¶

  Instead of deriving the location of a font in the destination tree from the location of the sources, the aliases and directory names from the Fontname distribution are used. (see Introduction in Fontname).

‘`nomfdrivers`’ ¶

  Let mktexpk and mktextfm create metafont driver files in a temporary directory. These will be used for just one metafont run and not installed permanently.

‘`nomode`’ ¶

  Omit the directory level for the mode name; this is fine as long as you generate fonts for only one mode.

‘`stripsupplier`’ ¶

  Omit the font supplier name directory level.

‘`striptypeface`’ ¶

  Omit the font typeface name directory level.

‘`strip`’ ¶

  Omit the font supplier and typeface name directory levels. This feature is deprecated in favour of ‘`stripsupplier`’ and ‘`striptypeface`’.

‘`varfonts`’ ¶

  When this option is enabled, fonts that would otherwise be written in system texmf tree go to the `VARTEXFONTS` tree instead. The default value in `kpathsea/Makefile.in` is `/var/tmp/texfonts`. The Linux File System Standard recommends `/var/tex/fonts`.

  The ‘`varfonts`’ setting in `MT_FEATURES` is overridden by the `USE_VARTEXFONTS` environment variable: if set to ‘`1`’, the feature is enabled, and if set to ‘`0`’, the feature is disabled.

‘`texmfvar`’ ¶

  Force generated files that would go into a system tree (as defined by `SYSTEXMF`) into `TEXMFVAR`. Starting with teTeX-3.0, the variable `TEXMFVAR` is always set. The ‘`varfonts`’ feature takes precedence if also set.

  The ‘`texmfvar`’ setting in `MT_FEATURES` is overridden by the `USE_TEXMFVAR` environment variable: if set to ‘`1`’, the feature is enabled, and if set to ‘`0`’, the feature is disabled.

#### 6.5.2 `mktex` script names ¶

The following table shows the default name of the script for each of the file types which support runtime generation.

`mktexfmt` ¶

  (‘`.fmt`’, ‘`.base`’, ‘`.mem`’) TeX/Metafont/MetaPost formats. This script is also named `fmtutil`, and reads `fmtutil.cnf` for configuration information.

`mktexmf` ¶

  (‘`.mf`’) Metafont input files.

`mkocp` ¶

  (‘`.ocp`’) Omega compiled process files.

`mkofm` ¶

  (‘`.ofm`’) Omega font metric files.

`mktexpk` ¶

  (‘`pk`’) Glyph fonts.

`mktextex` ¶

  (‘`.tex`’) TeX input files (disabled by default).

`mktextfm` ¶

  (‘`.tfm`’) TFM files.

These names can be overridden by an environment variable specific to the program; for example, `DVIPSMAKEPK` for Dvipsk.

If a `mktex…` script fails, the invocation is appended to a file `missfont.log` (by default) in the current directory. After fixing the problem, you can then execute the log file to create the missing files.

If the environment variable `TEXMF_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY` is set, `missfont.log` is first tried to be written there; if it’s not set, the current directory is tried first. If that first write fails and the environment variable or configuration file value `TEXMFOUTPUT` is set, we try to write `missfont.log` there. Otherwise nothing is written.

The base filename ‘`missfont.log`’ is overridden by the `MISSFONT_LOG` environment variable or configuration file value.

#### 6.5.3 `mktex` script arguments ¶

The first argument to a `mktex` script is always the name of the file to be created.

In the default `mktexpk` implementation, additional arguments may also be passed:

‘`--dpi num`’

  Sets the resolution of the generated font to num.

‘`--mfmode name`’

  Sets the Metafont mode to name.

‘`--bdpi num`’

  Sets the “base dpi” for the font. This must match the mode being used.

‘`--mag string`’

  A “magstep” string suitable for the Metafont `mag` variable. This must match the combination of bdpi and dpi being used.

‘`--destdir string`’

  A directory name. If the directory is absolute, it is used as-is. Otherwise, it is appended to the root destination directory set in the script.

## 7 Programming ¶

This chapter is for programmers who wish to use Kpathsea. See Introduction, for the conditions under which you may do so (in short, it is released under LGPLv2.1 or later).

### 7.1 Programming overview ¶

Aside from this manual, your best source of information is the source to the programs that use Kpathsea (see Introduction). First, Kpsewhich is a small utility program whose sole purpose is to exercise the main path-searching functionality. Of the drivers, Dviljk is probably the simplest full application program. Xdvik adds VF support and the complication of X resources. Dvipsk adds the complication of its own config files. Web2c is source code I also maintain, so it uses Kpathsea rather straightforwardly, but is of course complicated by the Web to C translation.

When looking at these program sources, you should know that previous versions of the library had a different programming interface; the current interface supports re-entrancy. Historically, the library function names were prefixed with `kpse_` instead of `kpathsea_`, and they did not need an instance variable as first argument. This change was made in 2009. The old functions will never disappear, and can reliably continue to be used when they suffice, as they do for the programs above. The main application using the re-entrant API is the MetaPost library used by MetaPost and LuaTeX.

Beyond these examples, the `.h` files in the Kpathsea source describe the interfaces and functionality (and of course the `.c` files define the actual routines, which are the ultimate documentation). `pathsearch.h` declares the basic searching routine. `tex-file.h` and `tex-glyph.h` define the interfaces for looking up particular kinds of files. In view of the way the headers depend on each other, it is recommended to use `#include <kpathsea/kpathsea.h>`, which includes every Kpathsea header.

If you want to include only specific headers, you should still consider including `kpathsea/config.h` before including any other Kpathsea header, as it provides symbols used in the other headers; `kpathsea/config.h` includes `kpathsea/c-auto.h`, which is generated by Autoconf.

The library provides no way for an external program to register new file types: `tex-file.[ch]` must be modified to do this. For example, Kpathsea has support for looking up Dvips config files, even though no program other than Dvips is likely to ever want to do so. I felt this was acceptable, since along with new file types should also come new defaults in `texmf.cnf` (and its descendant `paths.h`), since it’s simplest for users if they can modify one configuration file for all kinds of paths.

Kpathsea does not parse any formats itself; it barely opens any files. Its primary purpose is to return filenames. The GNU font utilities package contains libraries to read TFM, GF, and PK files, as do the programs above, of course.

### 7.2 Calling sequence ¶

The typical way to use Kpathsea in your program goes something like this:

1. Call `kpathsea_new` to create a new library instance. This variable must be passed as the first argument to all the following library functions. The rest of this manual will be using `kpse` as a placeholder for the name of this variable.
2. Call `kpathsea_set_program_name` with `argv[0]` as the second argument; the third argument is a string or `NULL`. The third argument is used by Kpathsea as the program name for the `.program` feature of config files (see Config files). If the third argument is `NULL`, the value of the second argument is used. This function must be called before any other use of the Kpathsea library.

   `kpathsea_set_program_name` always sets the variables `kpse->invocation_name` and `kpse->invocation_short_name`. These variables are used in the error message macros defined in `kpathsea/lib.h`. It sets the variable `kpse->program_name` to the program name it uses.

   It also initializes debugging options based on the environment variable `KPATHSEA_DEBUG` (if that is set).

   Finally, it sets the environment variables `SELFAUTOLOC`, `SELFAUTODIR` and `SELFAUTOPARENT` to the location, parent and grandparent directory of the executable, removing `.` and `..` path elements and resolving symbolic links. These are used in the default configuration file to allow people to invoke TeX from anywhere. You can use ‘`kpsewhich --expand-var=\$SELFAUTOLOC`’, etc., to see the values.

3. Set debugging options. See Debugging. If your program doesn’t have a debugging option already, you can define one and set `kpse->debug` to the number that the user supplies (as in Dviljk and Web2c), or you can just omit this altogether (users can always set the `KPATHSEA_DEBUG` environment variable). If you do have runtime debugging already, you need to merge Kpathsea’s options with yours (as in Dvipsk and Xdvik).
4. If your program has its own configuration files that can define search paths, you should assign those paths to the `client_path` member in the appropriate element of the `kpse->format_info` array. (This array is indexed by file type; see `tex-file.h`.) See `resident.c` in Dvipsk for an example.
5. Call `kpathsea_init_prog` (see `proginit.c`). It’s useful for the DVI drivers, at least, but for other programs it may be simpler to extract the parts of it that actually apply. This does not initialize any paths, it just looks for (and sets) certain environment variables and other random information. Search paths are always initialized at the first call to find a file of a given type, not requiring an explicit initialization call; this eliminates much useless work, e.g., initializing the BibTeX search paths in a DVI driver.
6. The routine to actually find a file of type format is `kpathsea_find_file`. You can call `kpathsea_find_file` after doing only the first and second of the initialization steps above—Kpathsea automatically reads the `texmf.cnf` generic config files, looks for environment variables, and does expansions at the first lookup.
7. To find PK and/or GF bitmap fonts, the routine is `kpathsea_find_glyph`, defined in `tex-glyph.h`. This returns a structure in addition to the resultant filename, because fonts can be found in so many ways. See the documentation in the source.
8. Before opening a file, especially for writing, you should check if the filename is acceptable. See the next section (see Safe filenames).
9. To actually open a file, not just return a filename, call `kpathsea_open_file`. This function takes the name to look up and a Kpathsea file format as arguments, and returns the usual `FILE *`. It always assumes the file must exist, and thus will search the disk if necessary (unless the search path specified ‘`!!`’, etc.). In other words, if you are looking up a VF or some other file that need not exist, don’t use this.
10. To close the Kpathsea library instance you are using, call `kpathsea_finish`. This function closes any open log files and frees the memory used by the instance.

Kpathsea also provides many utility routines. Some are generic: hash tables, memory allocation, string concatenation and copying, string lists, reading input lines of arbitrary length, etc. Others are filename-related: default path, tilde, and variable expansion, `stat` calls, etc.

The `c-*.h` header files can also help your program adapt to many different systems. You will almost certainly want to use Autoconf and probably Automake for configuring and building your software if you use Kpathsea; I strongly recommend using Autoconf and Automake regardless. They are available from https://gnu.org/software.

### 7.3 Safe filenames ¶

See Security, for some general security considerations with the TeX system.

In the implementation, the main security feature to disallow writing to potentially dangerous files is a configuration variable `openout_any`. It specifies one of three levels:

- When set to ‘`a`’ (for “any”), no restrictions are imposed.
- When is set to ‘`r`’ (for “restricted”), filenames beginning with ‘`.`’ are disallowed.
- When set to ‘`p`’ (for “paranoid”), additional restrictions are imposed.
  1. First, an absolute filename must refer to a file in (or in a subdirectory of) either the `TEXMF_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY` environment variable or the `TEXMFOUTPUT` environment variable or configuration file setting.
  2. LuaTeX uses a so-called “extended” mode, in which the values of `TEXMFVAR` and `TEXMFSYSVAR` are also checked for absolute filenames. This is done because, in practice, fundamental parts of the LuaLaTeX system (notably `luaotfload`) need a cache directory, and historically the `TEXMF[SYS]VAR` variables are what has been used. We neither recommend nor expect any other programs to need this.
  3. Finally, any attempt to go up a directory level is forbidden; that is, paths may not contain a ‘`..`’ component.

The paranoid setting is the default. Any program intended to be safely called from TeX should implement the same measures, one way or another. See Shell escapes in Web2c.

Kpathsea does not resolve ‘`..`’ components, or symbolic links, to see if the final result is an acceptable directory; they are simply forbidden. That is, Kpathsea merely considers the value as a string, not looking on the filesystem at all. (However, if another program wants to do such resolutions and check the result, that’s ok; possibly preferable.)

For backwards compatibility, ‘`y`’ and ‘`1`’ are synonyms of ‘`a`’, while ‘`n`’ and ‘`0`’ are synonyms for ‘`r`’.

The function `kpathsea_out_name_ok`, with a filename as second argument, returns `true` if that filename is acceptable to be opened for output or `false` otherwise. The Kpsewhich program has an option (‘`--safe-out-name`’) providing a command line interface for the check.

For LuaTeX’s extended mode, the function is `kpathsea_out_name_ok_extended`, and the Kpsewhich option is ‘`--safe-extended-out-name`’.

Although the analogous functions `kpathsea_in_name_ok` (resp. `_extended`, as well as the others below, exist to check a filename being acceptable for reading, as of 2026, they always return true without checking anything. This is because no other value was useful (or used) in practice. More comments about this are in the default `texmf.cnf`, at `openin_any` (which variable is defined, but is now ignored).

The functions above write a message to standard error if the usage is forbidden (so every caller does not have to do so). Each function has a `_silent` counterpart which does not write the message; this is what Kpsewhich calls, since messages would be counterproductive in that case. Thus:

    kpathsea_out_name_ok_silent
    kpathsea_out_name_ok_silent_extended
    kpathsea_in_name_ok_silent
    kpathsea_in_name_ok_silent_extended

Furthermore, there are `kpse_...` versions of all the above functions (as usual), with the default library instance implicitly passed as the first argument. LuaTeX provides both `kpse.*` and `kpathsea.*` bindings, so it’s good to always have both.

Sorry for the combinatorial explosion, but we hope no further options will ever be needed. If so, we’ll likely provide a more generic interface as well as the above.

### 7.4 Program-specific files ¶

Many programs will need to find some configuration files. Kpathsea contains some support to make it easy to place them in their own directories. The Standard TeX directory structure (see Introduction in A Directory Structure for TeX files), specifies that such files should go into a subdirectory named after the program, like ‘`texmf/ttf2pk`’.

Two formats, ‘`kpse_program_text_format`’ and ‘`kpse_program_binary_format`’, use `.:$TEXMF/program//` as their compiled-in search path. To override this default, you can use the variable `PROGRAMINPUTS` in the environment and/or ‘`texmf.cnf`’. That is to say, the name of the variable is constructed by converting the name of the program to upper case, and appending `INPUTS`.

The only difference between these two formats is whether `kpathsea_open_file` will open the files it finds in text or binary mode.

### 7.5 Programming with config files ¶

You can (and probably should) use the same `texmf.cnf` configuration file that Kpathsea uses for your program. This helps installers by keeping all configuration in one place.

To retrieve a value for a configuration variable var, the best way is to call `kpathsea_var_value` on the string `var`. This will look first for an environment variable var, then a config file value. The result will be the value found or ‘`NULL`’. This function is declared in `kpathsea/variable.h`. For an example, see the `shell_escape` code in `web2c/lib/texmfmp.c`.

The routine to do full variable and tilde expansion of an arbitrary string in the context of a search path (as opposed to simply retrieving a value) is `kpathsea_var_expand`, also declared in `kpathsea/variable.h`. However, it’s generally only necessary to set the search path structure components as explained in the previous section instead of using this directly. Because of its usage with any input string, undefined `$FOO` constructs in the argument to `kpathsea_var_expand` are returned literally (`"$FOO"`), while undefined `${FOO}` constructs are expanded to the empty string.

If for some reason you want to retrieve a value only from a config file, not automatically looking for a corresponding environment variable, call `kpathsea_cnf_get` (declared in `kpathsea/cnf.h`) with the string var.

No initialization calls are needed.

## 8 Reporting bugs ¶

If you have problems or suggestions, please report them to tex-k@tug.org using the bug checklist below.

Please report bugs in the documentation; not only factual errors or inconsistent behavior, but unclear or incomplete explanations, typos, wrong fonts, …

### 8.1 Bug checklist ¶

Before reporting a bug, please check below to be sure it isn’t already known (see Common problems).

Bug reports should be sent via electronic mail to tex-k@tug.org.

The general principle is that a good bug report includes all the information necessary for reproduction. Therefore, to enable investigation, your report should include the following:

- The version number(s) of the program(s) involved, and of Kpathsea itself. You can get the former by giving a sole option ‘`--version`’ to the program, and the latter by running ‘`kpsewhich --version`’. The `NEWS` and `ChangeLog` files also contain the version number.
- The hardware, operating system (including version), compiler, and `make` program you are using (the output of `uname -a` is a start on the first two, though incomplete).
- Any options you gave to `configure`. This is recorded in the `config.status` files.

  If you are reporting a bug in ‘`configure`’ itself, it’s probably system-dependent, and it will be unlikely the maintainers can do anything useful if you merely report that thus-and-such is broken. Therefore, you need to do some additional work: for some bugs, you can look in the file `config.log` where the test that failed should appear, along with the compiler invocation and source program in question. You can then compile it yourself by hand, and discover why the test failed. Other ‘`configure`’ bugs do not involve the compiler; in that case, the only recourse is to inspect the `configure` shell script itself, or the Autoconf macros that generated `configure`.

- The log of all debugging output, if the bug is in path searching. You can get this by setting the environment variable `KPATHSEA_DEBUG` to ‘`-1`’ before running the program. Please look at the log yourself to make sure the behavior is really a bug before reporting it; perhaps “old” environment variable settings are causing files not to be found, for example.
- The contents of any input files necessary to reproduce the bug. For bugs in DVI-reading programs, for example, this generally means a DVI file (and any EPS or other files it uses)—TeX source files are helpful, but the DVI file is required, because that’s the actual program input.
- If you are sending a patch (do so if you can!), please do so in the form of a context diff (‘`diff -c`’) against the original distribution source. Any other form of diff is either not as complete or harder for me to understand. Please also include a `ChangeLog` entry.
- If the bug involved is an actual crash (i.e., core dump), it is easy and useful to include a stack trace from a debugger (I recommend the GNU debugger GDB (https://gnu.org/software/gdb). If the cause is apparent (a `NULL` value being dereferenced, for example), please send the details along. If the program involved is TeX or Metafont, and the crash is happening at apparently-sound code, however, the bug may well be in the compiler, rather than in the program or the library (see TeX or Metafont failing).
- Any additional information that will be helpful in reproducing, diagnosing, or fixing the bug.

### 8.2 Mailing lists ¶

Web2c and Kpathsea in general are discussed on the mailing list tex-k@tug.org. You can subscribe and peruse the archives on the web https://lists.tug.org/tex-k.

You do not need to join to submit a report, nor will it affect whether you get a response. Be aware that large data files are sometimes included in bug reports. If this is a problem for you, do not join the list.

If you are looking for general TeX help, such as how to install a full TeX system or how to use LaTeX, please see https://tug.org/begin.html.

### 8.3 Debugging ¶

Kpathsea provides a number of runtime debugging options, detailed below by their names and corresponding numeric values. When the files you expect aren’t being found, the thing to do is enable these options and examine the output.

You can set these with some runtime argument (e.g., ‘`-d`’) to the program; in that case, you should use the numeric values described in the program’s documentation (which, for Dvipsk and Xdvik, are different than those below). It’s best to give the ‘`-d`’ (or whatever) option first, for maximal output. Dvipsk and Xdvik have additional program-specific debugging options as well.

You can also set the environment variable `KPATHSEA_DEBUG`; in this case, you should use the numbers below. If you run the program under a debugger and set the instance variable `kpse->debug`, also use the numbers below.

In any case, by far the simplest value to use is ‘`-1`’, which will turn on all debugging output. This is usually better than guessing which particular values will yield the output you need.

Debugging output always goes to standard error, so you can redirect it easily. For example, in Bourne-compatible shells:

    dvips -d -1 ... 2>/tmp/debug

It is sometimes helpful to run the standalone Kpsewhich utility (see `kpsewhich`: Standalone path searching), instead of the original program.

In any case, you cannot use the names below; you must always use somebody’s numbers. (Sorry.) To set more than one option, just sum the corresponding numbers.

`KPSE_DEBUG_STAT (1)` ¶

  Report ‘`stat`’(2) calls. This is useful for verifying that your directory structure is not forcing Kpathsea to do many additional file tests (see Slow path searching, and see Subdirectory expansion). If you are using an up-to-date `ls-R` database (see Filename database (`ls-R`)), this should produce no output unless a nonexistent file that must exist is searched for.

`KPSE_DEBUG_HASH (2)` ¶

  Report lookups in all hash tables: `ls-R` and `aliases` (see Filename database (`ls-R`)); font aliases (see Fontmap); and config file values (see Config files). Useful when expected values are not being found, e.g.., file searches are looking at the disk instead of using `ls-R`.

`KPSE_DEBUG_FOPEN (4)` ¶

  Report file openings and closings. Especially useful when your system’s file table is full, for seeing which files have been opened but never closed. In case you want to set breakpoints in a debugger: this works by redefining ‘`fopen`’ (‘`fclose`’) to be ‘`kpse_fopen_trace`’ (‘`kpse_fclose_trace`’).

`KPSE_DEBUG_PATHS (8)` ¶

  Report general path information for each file type Kpathsea is asked to search. This is useful when you are trying to track down how a particular path got defined—from `texmf.cnf`, `config.ps`, an environment variable, the compile-time default, etc. This is the contents of the `kpse_format_info_type` structure defined in `tex-file.h`.

`KPSE_DEBUG_EXPAND (16)` ¶

  Report the directory list corresponding to each path element Kpathsea searches. This is only relevant when Kpathsea searches the disk, since `ls-R` searches don’t look through directory lists in this way.

`KPSE_DEBUG_SEARCH (32)` ¶

  Report on each file search: the name of the file searched for, the path searched in, whether or not the file must exist (when drivers search for `cmr10.vf`, it need not exist), and whether or not we are collecting all occurrences of the file in the path (as with, e.g., `texmf.cnf` and `texfonts.map`), or just the first (as with most lookups). This can help you correlate what Kpathsea is doing with what is in your input file.

`KPSE_DEBUG_VARS (64)` ¶

  Report the value of each variable Kpathsea looks up. This is useful for verifying that variables do indeed obtain their correct values.

`GSFTOPK_DEBUG (128)` ¶

  Activates debugging printout specific to `gsftopk` program.

`MAKETEX_DEBUG (512)` ¶

  If you use the optional `mktex` programs instead of the traditional shell scripts, this will report the name of the site file (`mktex.cnf` by default) which is read, directories created by `mktexdir`, the full path of the `ls-R` database built by `mktexlsr`, font map searches, `MT_FEATURES` in effect, parameters from `mktexnam`, filenames added by `mktexupd`, and some subsidiary commands run by the programs.

`MAKETEX_FINE_DEBUG (1024)` ¶

  When the optional `mktex` programs are used, this will print additional debugging info from functions internal to these programs.

Debugging output from Kpathsea is always written to standard error, and begins with the string ‘`kdebug:`’. (Except for hash table buckets, which just start with the number, but you can only get that output running under a debugger. See comments at the `hash_summary_only` variable in `kpathsea/db.c`.)

### 8.4 Logging ¶

Kpathsea can record the time and filename found for each successful search. This may be useful in finding good candidates for deletion when your filesystem is full, or in discovering usage patterns at your site.

To do this, define the environment or config file variable `TEXMFLOG`. The value is the name of the file to append the information to. The file is created if it doesn’t exist, and appended to if it does.

Each successful search turns into one line in the log file: two words separated by a space. The first word is the time of the search, as the integer number of seconds since “the epoch”, i.e., UTC midnight 1 January 1970 (more precisely, the result of the `time` system call). The second word is the filename.

For example, after `setenv TEXMFLOG /tmp/log`, running Dvips on `story.dvi` appends the following lines:

    774455887 /usr/local/share/texmf/dvips/config.ps
    774455887 /usr/local/share/texmf/dvips/psfonts.map
    774455888 /usr/local/share/texmf/dvips/texc.pro
    774455888 /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/cm/cmbx10.600pk
    774455889 /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/cm/cmsl10.600pk
    774455889 /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/cm/cmr10.600pk
    774455889 /usr/local/share/texmf/dvips/texc.pro

Only filenames that are absolute are recorded, to preserve some semblance of privacy.

In addition to this Kpathsea-specific logging, `pdftex` provides an option `-recorder` to write the names of all files accessed during a run to the file `basefile.fls`.

Finally, most systems provide a general tool to output each system call, thus including opening and closing files. It might be named `strace`, `truss`, `struss`, or something else.

### 8.5 Common problems ¶

Here are some common problems with configuration, compilation, linking, execution, …

#### 8.5.1 Unable to find files ¶

If a program complains it cannot find fonts (or other input files), any of several things might be wrong. In any case, you may find the debugging options helpful. See Debugging.

- Perhaps you simply haven’t installed all the necessary files; the basic fonts and input files are distributed separately from the programs. See `unixtex.ftp`: Obtaining TeX.
- You have (perhaps unknowingly) told Kpathsea to use search paths that don’t reflect where the files actually are. One common cause is having environment variables set from a previous installation, thus overriding what you carefully set in `texmf.cnf` (see Supported file formats). System `/etc/profile` or other files such may be the culprit.
- Your files reside in a directory that is only pointed to via a symbolic link within a leaf directory, and is not listed in `ls-R`.

  Unfortunately, Kpathsea’s subdirectory searching has a problematic deficiency: If a directory d being searched for subdirectories contains symbolic links to other directories (and possibly other plain files or symlinks), but no true subdirectories, by default d will be considered a leaf directory, i.e., the symbolic links will not be followed. See Subdirectory expansion.

  You can work around this problem by creating an empty dummy subdirectory in d. Then d will no longer be a leaf, and the symlinks will be followed.

  Another workaround is to set the configuration variable `kpse_ignore_nlink_for_leaf` to 1. Then Kpathsea will look at all entries in all directories in determining whether they are (symlinks to) subdirectories. This is not the default because it is considerably expensive to consider the contents of every leaf directory.

  The directory immediately followed by the ‘`//`’ in the path specification is always searched for subdirectories, even if it is a leaf. Presumably you would not have asked for the directory to be searched for subdirectories if you didn’t want it to be.

- If the fonts (or whatever) don’t already exist, `mktexpk` (or `mktexmf` or `mktextfm`) will try to create them. If these rather complicated shell scripts fail, you’ll eventually get an error message saying something like ‘`Can't find font fontname`’. The best solution is to fix (or at least report) the bug in `mktexpk`; the workaround is to generate the necessary fonts by hand with Metafont, or to grab them from a CTAN site (see `unixtex.ftp`: Obtaining TeX).
- There is a bug in the library. See Reporting bugs.

#### 8.5.2 Slow path searching ¶

If your program takes an excessively long time to find fonts or other input files, but does eventually succeed, here are some possible culprits:

- Most likely, you just have a lot of directories to search, and that takes a noticeable time. The solution is to create and maintain a separate `ls-R` file that lists all the files in your main TeX hierarchy. See Filename database (`ls-R`). Kpathsea always uses `ls-R` if it’s present; there’s no need to recompile or reconfigure any of the programs.
- Your recursively-searched directories (e.g., `/usr/local/share/texmf/fonts//`), contain a mixture of files and directories. This prevents Kpathsea from using a useful optimization (see Subdirectory expansion).

  It is best to have only directories (and perhaps a `README`) in the upper levels of the directory structure, and it’s very important to have only files, and no subdirectories, in the leaf directories where the dozens of TFM, PK, or whatever files reside.

In any case, you may find the debugging options helpful in determining precisely when the disk or network is being pounded. See Debugging.

#### 8.5.3 Unable to generate fonts ¶

Metafont outputs fonts in bitmap format, tuned for a particular device at a particular resolution, in order to allow for the highest-possible quality of output. Some DVI-to-whatever programs, such as Dvips, try to generate these on the fly when they are needed, but this generation may fail in several cases.

If `mktexpk` runs, but fails with this error:

    mktexpk: Can't guess mode for nnn dpi devices.
    mktexpk: Use a config file to specify the mode, or update me.

you need to ensure the resolution and mode match; just specifying the resolution, as in `-D 360`, is not enough.

You can specify the mode name with the `-mode` option on the Dvips command line, or in a Dvips configuration file (see Config files in Dvips), such as `config.ps` in your document directory, `~/.dvipsrc` in your home directory, or in a system directory (again named `config.ps`). (Other drivers use other files, naturally.)

For example, if you need 360dpi fonts, you could include this in a configuration file:

    D 360
    M lqmed

If Metafont runs, but generates fonts at the wrong resolution or for the wrong device, most likely `mktexpk`’s built-in guess for the mode is wrong, and you should override it as above.

See https://ctan.org/pkg/modes for a list of resolutions and mode names for most devices (additional submissions are welcome).

If Metafont runs but generates fonts at a resolution of 2602dpi (and prints out the name of each character as well as just a character number, and maybe tries to display the characters), then your Metafont base file probably hasn’t been made properly. (It’s using the default `proof` mode, instead of an actual device mode.) To make a proper `plain.base`, assuming the local mode definitions are contained in a file `modes.mf`, run the following command (assuming Unix):

    inimf "plain; input modes; dump"

Then copy the `plain.base` file from the current directory to where the base files are stored on your system (`/usr/local/share/texmf/web2c` by default), and make a link (either hard or soft) from `plain.base` to `mf.base` in that directory. See inimf invocation in Web2c.

If `mf` is a command not found at all by `mktexpk`, then you need to install Metafont (see `unixtex.ftp`: Obtaining TeX).

#### 8.5.4 TeX or Metafont failing ¶

If TeX or Metafont get a segmentation fault or otherwise fail while running a normal input file, the problem is usually a compiler bug (unlikely as that may sound). Even if the trip and trap tests are passed, problems may lurk. Optimization occasionally causes trouble in programs other than TeX and Metafont themselves, too.

For a workaround, if you enabled any optimization flags, it’s best to omit optimization entirely. In any case, the way to find the facts is to run the program under the debugger and see where it’s failing.

Also, if you have trouble with a system C compiler, I advise trying the GNU C compiler. And vice versa, unfortunately; but in that case I also recommend reporting a bug to the GCC mailing list; see Bugs in Using and Porting GNU CC.

To report compiler bugs effectively requires perseverance and perspicacity: you must find the miscompiled line, and that usually involves delving backwards in time from the point of error, checking through TeX’s (or whatever program’s) data structures. Good luck.

## Index ¶

Jump to: | - ; : ! . { / \ = ~ $ 2 8 A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Z

| Index Entry | Section
-
| `--all` | Path searching options
| `--casefold-search` | Path searching options
| `--cnf-line` | Path searching options
| `‘`--cnf-line`’, source for path` | Path sources
| `--color=tty` | ls-R
| `--debug=num` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--dpi=num` | Path searching options
| `--engine=name` | Path searching options
| `--expand-braces=string` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--expand-path=string` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--expand-var=string` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--format=name` | Path searching options
| `--help` | Standard options
| `--help-formats` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--interactive` | Path searching options
| `--mktex=filetype` | Path searching options
| `--mode=string` | Path searching options
| `--must-exist` | Path searching options
| `--no-casefold-search` | Path searching options
| `--no-mktex=filetype` | Path searching options
| `--path=string` | Path searching options
| `--progname=name` | Path searching options
| `--safe-extended-in-name=name` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--safe-extended-out-name=name` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--safe-in-name=name` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--safe-out-name=name` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--show-path=name` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--subdir=string` | Path searching options
| `--var-brace-value=variable` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--var-value=variable` | Auxiliary tasks
| `--version` | Standard options
| `--with-mktextex-default` | mktex configuration
| `--without-mktexfmt-default` | mktex configuration
| `--without-mktexmf-default` | mktex configuration
| `--without-mktexocp-default` | mktex configuration
| `--without-mktexofm-default` | mktex configuration
| `--without-mktexpk-default` | mktex configuration
| `--without-mktextfm-default` | mktex configuration
| `-1 debugging value` | Debugging
| `-A option to `ls`` | ls-R
| `-D num` | Path searching options
| `-iname, find predicate` | Casefolding examples
| `-L option to `ls`` | ls-R
;
| `; translated to ‘`:`’ in `texmf.cnf`` | Config files
:
| `: may not be :` | Searching overview
| `:: expansion` | Default expansion
!
| `!! and casefolding` | Casefolding examples
| `!! in path specifications` | ls-R
| `!! in `TEXMFDBS`` | ls-R
.
| `. directories, ignored` | ls-R
| `. files` | ls-R
| `.2602gf` | Unable to generate fonts
| `.afm` | Supported file formats
| `.base` | Supported file formats
| `.bib` | Supported file formats
| `.bltxml` | Supported file formats
| `.bst` | Supported file formats
| `.cid` | Supported file formats
| `.cmap` | Supported file formats
| `.cnf` | Supported file formats
| `.dll` | Supported file formats
| `.enc` | Supported file formats
| `.eps` | Supported file formats
| `.epsi` | Supported file formats
| `.fea` | Supported file formats
| `.fmt` | Supported file formats
| `.ist` | Supported file formats
| `.lig` | Supported file formats
| `.lua` | Supported file formats
| `.luatex` | Supported file formats
| `.luc` | Supported file formats
| `.luctex` | Supported file formats
| `.map` | Supported file formats
| `.mem` | Supported file formats
| `.mf` | Supported file formats
| `.mft` | Supported file formats
| `.mlbib` | Supported file formats
| `.mlbst` | Supported file formats
| `.mp` | Supported file formats
| `.ocp` | Supported file formats
| `.ofm` | Supported file formats
| `.opl` | Supported file formats
| `.otp` | Supported file formats
| `.ovf` | Supported file formats
| `.ovp` | Supported file formats
| `.pfa` | Supported file formats
| `.pfb` | Supported file formats
| `.pk` | Supported file formats
| `.pool` | Supported file formats
| `.pool` | Supported file formats
| `.pool` | Supported file formats
| `.pro` | Supported file formats
| `.profile, (un)writable by TeX` | Security
| `.progname qualifier in `texmf.cnf`` | Config files
| `.ris` | Supported file formats
| `.sfd` | Supported file formats
| `.so` | Supported file formats
| `.tex` | Supported file formats
| `.tex file, included in `ls-R`` | ls-R
| `.texlua` | Supported file formats
| `.texluc` | Supported file formats
| `.tfm` | Supported file formats
| `.tlu` | Supported file formats
| `.ttc` | Supported file formats
| `.ttf` | Supported file formats
| `.vf` | Supported file formats
| `.w` | Supported file formats
| `.web` | Supported file formats
| `.web` | Supported file formats
{
| `{ expansion` | Brace expansion
/
| `/ may not be /` | Searching overview
| `/, trailing in home directory` | Tilde expansion
| `//` | Subdirectory expansion
| `/etc/profile` | Unable to find files
| `/etc/profile and aliases` | ls-R
| `/var/tmp/texfonts` | mktex configuration
\
| `\, line continuation in `texmf.cnf`` | Config files
| `\openin` | Searching overview
| `\openout` | Security
| `\special, suppressing warnings about` | Suppressing warnings
=
| `= omitted in `texmf.cnf` and misparsing` | Config files
~
| `~ expansion` | Tilde expansion
$
| `$ expansion` | Variable expansion
2
| `2602gf` | Unable to generate fonts
8
| 8.3 filenames, using | mktex configuration
A
| absolute filenames | Searching overview
| `access system call` | Casefolding examples
| access warnings | Searching overview
| `AFMFONTS` | Supported file formats
| aliases for fonts | Fontmap
| aliases, for filenames | Filename aliases
| `all` | Suppressing warnings
| all matches, finding | Path searching options
| alphabetical order, not | Subdirectory expansion
| announcement mailing list | Mailing lists
| API, re-entrant | Programming overview
| append-only directories and `mktexpk` | Global font cache and security
| `appendonlydir` | mktex configuration
| Apple filesystem, case-insensitive | Casefolding rationale
| arguments to `mktex` | mktex script arguments
| `argv[0]` | Calling sequence
| `autoconf, recommended` | Calling sequence
| automounter, and `ls-R` | ls-R
| auxiliary tasks | Auxiliary tasks
B
| Bach, Johann Sebastian | Default expansion
| backslash-newline | Config files
| basic glyph lookup | Basic glyph lookup
| Berry, Karl | History
| `BIBINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `BIBINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| blank lines, in `texmf.cnf` | Config files
| `BLTXMLINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| brace expansion | Brace expansion
| Breitenlohner, Peter | History
| `BSTINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `BSTINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| bug address | Reporting bugs
| bug checklist | Bug checklist
| bug mailing list | Mailing lists
| bugs, reporting | Reporting bugs
C
| `c-*.h` | Calling sequence
| `c-auto.h` | Programming overview
| cache of fonts, local | Global font cache and security
| calling sequence | Calling sequence
| casefolding examples | Casefolding examples
| casefolding fallback rationale | Casefolding rationale
| casefolding search | Casefolding search
| `ChangeLog entry` | Bug checklist
| checklist for bug reports | Bug checklist
| `checksum` | Suppressing warnings
| circle fonts | Fontmap
| `client_path in `kpse->format_info`` | Calling sequence
| `CLUAINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `CMAPFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `cmr10, as fallback font` | Fallback font
| `cmr10.vf` | Searching overview
| `cnf.c` | Config files
| `cnf.h` | Programming with config files
| comments, in fontmap files | Fontmap
| comments, in `texmf.cnf` | Config files
| comments, making | Introduction
| common features in glyph lookup | Basic glyph lookup
| common problems | Common problems
| compilation value, source for path | Path sources
| compiler bugs | TeX or Metafont failing
| compiler bugs, finding | TeX or Metafont failing
| conditions for use | Introduction
| config files | Config files
| config files, for Kpathsea-using programs | Calling sequence
| config files, programming with | Programming with config files
| `config.h` | Programming overview
| `config.log` | Bug checklist
| `config.ps` | Specially-recognized files
| `config.ps, search path for` | Supported file formats
| `config.status` | Bug checklist
| configuration bugs | Bug checklist
| configuration file, source for path | Path sources
| configuration of `mktex` scripts | mktex configuration
| `configure` options for `mktex` scripts | mktex configuration
| ConTeXt and (no) security | Security
| context diff | Bug checklist
| continuation character | Config files
| core dumps, reporting | Bug checklist
| crashes of TeX and security | Security
| crashes, reporting | Bug checklist
| `CWEBINPUTS` | Supported file formats
D
| database search | Searching overview
| database, for filenames | Filename database
| database, format of | Database format
| `debug.h` | Debugging
| debugger | Bug checklist
| debugging | Debugging
| debugging options, in Kpathsea-using program | Calling sequence
| debugging output | Debugging
| default expansion | Default expansion
| `default_texsizes` | Fallback font
| device, wrong | Unable to generate fonts
| directories, making append-only | mktex configuration
| directory permissions | Global font cache and security
| directory structure, for TeX files | TeX directory structure
| disabling `mktex` scripts | mktex configuration
| disk search | Searching overview
| disk searching, avoiding | ls-R
| disk usage, reducing | Logging
| `doc files` | Supported file formats
| DOS compatible names | mktex configuration
| `dosnames` | mktex configuration
| dot files | ls-R
| doubled colons | Default expansion
| `dpinnn directories` | mktex configuration
| `DVILJMAKEPK` | mktex script names
| `DVILJSIZES` | Fallback font
| `dvipdfmx.cfg` | Specially-recognized files
| `DVIPSFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `DVIPSHEADERS` | Supported file formats
| `DVIPSMAKEPK` | mktex script names
| `DVIPSSIZES` | Fallback font
| dynamic creation of files | mktex scripts
E
| EC fonts, and dynamic source creation | mktex scripts
| `elt-dirs.c` | Subdirectory expansion
| `elt-dirs.c` | Subdirectory expansion
| enabling `mktex` scripts | mktex configuration
| `ENCFONTS` | Supported file formats
| engine name | Path searching options
| environment variable, source for path | Path sources
| environment variables for TeX | Supported file formats
| environment variables in paths | Variable expansion
| environment variables, old | Unable to find files
| epoch, seconds since | Logging
| error message macros | Calling sequence
| examples, of casefolding searches | Casefolding examples
| examples, of running `kpsewhich` | kpsewhich examples
| excessive startup time | Slow path searching
| `expand.c` | Brace expansion
| expanding symlinks | Calling sequence
| expansion, default | Default expansion
| expansion, path element | Searching overview
| expansion, search path | Path expansion
| expansion, subdirectory | Subdirectory expansion
| expansion, tilde | Tilde expansion
| expansion, variable | Variable expansion
| explicitly relative filenames | Searching overview
| extensions, filename | File lookup
| externally-built filename database | Filename database
| extra colons | Default expansion
F
| failed `mktex…` script invocation | mktex script names
| fallback font | Fallback font
| fallback resolutions | Fallback font
| FAQ, Kpathsea | Common problems
| Farwell, Matthew | Subdirectory expansion
| file formats, supported | Supported file formats
| file lookup | File lookup
| file permissions | Global font cache and security
| file types, registering new | Programming overview
| filename aliases | Filename aliases
| filename database | Filename database
| filenames, absolute or explicitly relative | Searching overview
| files, unable to find | Unable to find files
| filesystem search | Searching overview
| filesystem, case-(in)sensitive | Casefolding rationale
| Findutils, GNU package | Casefolding examples
| floating directories | Searching overview
| `fmtutil` | mktex script names
| `fmtutil.cnf` | Specially-recognized files
| `fmtutils.cnf` | mktex configuration
| font alias files | Fontmap
| font generation failures | Unable to generate fonts
| font of last resort | Fallback font
| font set, infinite | mktex scripts
| `FONTCIDMAPS` | Supported file formats
| `FONTFEATURES` | Supported file formats
| fontmap files | Fontmap
| `fontmaps` | mktex configuration
| fontmaps | mktex configuration
| fontname | mktex configuration
| fontnames, arbitrary length | Fontmap
| `FOOINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `FOOINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `fopen, redefined` | Debugging
| format of external database | Database format
| `ftp.cs.stanford.edu` | unixtex.ftp
| `ftp.tug.org` | unixtex.ftp
| fundamental purpose of Kpathsea | Introduction
G
| `gdb, recommended` | Bug checklist
| `gf` | Supported file formats
| `GFFONTS` | Supported file formats
| globally writable directories | Global font cache and security
| glyph lookup | Glyph lookup
| glyph lookup bitmap tolerance | Basic glyph lookup
| `GLYPHFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `GLYPHFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `glyphlist.txt` | Specially-recognized files
| GNU C compiler bugs | TeX or Metafont failing
| GNU General Public License | Introduction
| group-writable directories | Global font cache and security
| `GSFTOPK_DEBUG (128)` | Debugging
H
| hash table buckets, printing | Debugging
| hash table routines | Calling sequence
| `hash_summary_only variable for debugging` | Debugging
| history of Kpathsea | History
| Hoekwater, Taco | History
| home directories in paths | Tilde expansion
| `HOME, as ~ expansion` | Tilde expansion
I
| identifiers, characters valid in | Config files
| `include fontmap directive` | Fontmap
| `INDEXSTYLE` | Supported file formats
| input lines, reading | Calling sequence
| interactive query | Path searching options
| interface, not frozen | Introduction
| introduction | Introduction
K
| ‘`kdebug:`’ | Debugging
| `kdefault.c` | Default expansion
| Knuth, Donald E. | History
| Knuth, Donald E., archive of programs by | unixtex.ftp
| Kpathsea config file, source for path | Path sources
| `kpathsea_cnf_get` | Programming with config files
| `KPATHSEA_DEBUG` | Calling sequence
| `KPATHSEA_DEBUG` | Debugging
| `kpathsea_find_file` | File lookup
| `kpathsea_find_file` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_find_glyph` | Glyph lookup
| `kpathsea_find_glyph` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_finish` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_in_name_ok` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_in_name_ok_extended` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_in_name_ok_silent` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_in_name_ok_silent_extended` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_init_prog` | Fallback font
| `kpathsea_init_prog` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_new` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_open_file` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_out_name_ok` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_out_name_ok_extended` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_out_name_ok_silent` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_out_name_ok_silent_extended` | Safe filenames
| `kpathsea_set_program_name` | Calling sequence
| `kpathsea_var_value` | Programming with config files
| `KPATHSEA_WARNING` | Config files
| `kpathsea.h` | Programming overview
| kpse mode of LuaTeX | Security
| `KPSE_BITMAP_TOLERANCE` | Basic glyph lookup
| `KPSE_DEBUG_EXPAND (16)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DEBUG_FOPEN (4)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DEBUG_HASH (2)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DEBUG_PATHS (8)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DEBUG_SEARCH (32)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DEBUG_STAT (1)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DEBUG_VARS (64)` | Debugging
| `KPSE_DOT expansion` | KPSE_DOT expansion
| `kpse_format_info_type` | Debugging
| `kpse->debug` | Debugging
| `kpse->debug` | Debugging
| `kpse->debug variable` | Calling sequence
| `kpse->format_info` | Calling sequence
| `kpse->invocation_name` | Calling sequence
| `kpse->invocation_short_name` | Calling sequence
| `kpse->program_name` | Calling sequence
| `kpsewhich` | Invoking kpsewhich
| `kpsewhich` examples | kpsewhich examples
| Kpsewhich, and debugging | Debugging
L
| last-resort font | Fallback font
| `lcircle10` | Fontmap
| leading colons | Default expansion
| leaf directories wrongly guessed | Unable to find files
| leaf directory trick | Subdirectory expansion
| license for using the library | Introduction
| `LIGFONTS` | Supported file formats
| lines, reading arbitrary-length | Calling sequence
| Linux File System Standard | mktex configuration
| local cache of fonts | Global font cache and security
| log file | Logging
| logging successful searches | Logging
| `lost+found directory` | Searching overview
| `lostchar` | Suppressing warnings
| `ls-R` | Supported file formats
| `ls-R database file` | ls-R
| `ls-R, simplest build` | ls-R
| `LUAINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `luaotfload` | Safe filenames
| LuaTeX and security | Security
M
| Mac filesystem, case-insensitive | Casefolding rationale
| MacKenzie, David | History
| MacKenzie, David | Subdirectory expansion
| magic characters | Searching overview
| mailing lists | Mailing lists
| `MAKETEX_DEBUG (512)` | Debugging
| `MAKETEX_FINE_DEBUG (1024)` | Debugging
| memory allocation routines | Calling sequence
| metafont driver files | mktex configuration
| Metafont failures | TeX or Metafont failing
| Metafont installation | Unable to generate fonts
| Metafont making too-large fonts | Unable to generate fonts
| Metafont using the wrong device | Unable to generate fonts
| `MFBASES` | Supported file formats
| `MFINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `MFPOOL` | Supported file formats
| `MFTINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `MISCFONTS` | Supported file formats
| mismatched checksum warnings | Suppressing warnings
| `MISSFONT_LOG` | mktex script names
| `missfont.log` | mktex script names
| missing character warnings | Suppressing warnings
| `mkocp` | mktex script names
| `mkofm` | mktex script names
| `mktex` script configuration | mktex configuration
| `mktex` script names | mktex script names
| `mktex` scripts | mktex scripts
| `mktex.cnf` | Specially-recognized files
| `mktex.cnf` | mktex configuration
| `mktex.opt` | mktex configuration
| `mktex.opt` | mktex configuration
| `mktexdir` | mktex configuration
| `mktexfmt` | mktex script names
| `mktexmf` | mktex script names
| `mktexpk` | mktex script names
| `mktexpk` can’t guess mode | Unable to generate fonts
| `mktextex` | mktex script names
| `mktextfm` | mktex script names
| `MLBIBINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `MLBSTINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| mode directory, omitting | mktex configuration
| Morgan, Tim | History
| `MPINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `MPMEMS` | Supported file formats
| `MPPOOL` | Supported file formats
| `MPSUPPORT` | Supported file formats
| `MT_FEATURES` | mktex configuration
| multiple TeX hierarchies | Brace expansion
| must exist | Searching overview
N
| names for `mktex` scripts | mktex script names
| Neumann, Gustaf | History
| NFS and `ls-R` | ls-R
| `nomfdrivers` | mktex configuration
| `nomode` | mktex configuration
| `none` | Suppressing warnings
| null pointers, dereferencing | Bug checklist
| numeric debugging values | Debugging
O
| obtaining TeX | unixtex.ftp
| `OCPINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `OFMFONTS` | Supported file formats
| online Metafont display, spurious | Unable to generate fonts
| `openin_any` | Safe filenames
| `openout_any` | Safe filenames
| `OPENTYPEFONTS` | Supported file formats
| optimization caveat | TeX or Metafont failing
| options for debugging | Debugging
| `OTPINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| overview of path searching | Searching overview
| overview of programming with Kpathsea | Programming overview
| `OVFFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `OVPFONTS` | Supported file formats
P
| paranoid mode, for output files | Safe filenames
| path expansion | Path expansion
| path searching | Path searching
| path searching options | Path searching options
| path searching, overview | Searching overview
| path searching, standalone | Invoking kpsewhich
| path sources | Path sources
| `pathsearch.h` | Programming overview
| `pc Pascal compiler` | History
| `pdfglyphlist.txt` | Specially-recognized files
| `pdftex.cfg` | Specially-recognized files
| `PDFTEXCONFIG` | Supported file formats
| `pdftexconfig.tex` | Specially-recognized files
| permission denied | Searching overview
| permissions, directory | Global font cache and security
| permissions, file | Global font cache and security
| `PKFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `plain.base` | Unable to generate fonts
| privacy, semblance of | Logging
| problems, common | Common problems
| `proginit.h` | Calling sequence
| program-varying paths | Supported file formats
| programming overview | Programming overview
| programming with config files | Programming with config files
| programming with Kpathsea | Calling sequence
| programs using the library | Introduction
| proof mode | Unable to generate fonts
| `PSHEADERS` | Supported file formats
| `pxp Pascal preprocessor` | History
Q
| quoting variable values | Variable expansion
R
| rationale for casefolding fallback | Casefolding rationale
| re-entrant API | Programming overview
| `readable` | Suppressing warnings
| reading arbitrary-length lines | Calling sequence
| recording successful searches | Logging
| relative filenames | Searching overview
| reporting bugs | Reporting bugs
| `resident.c` | Calling sequence
| resolution, setting | Path searching options
| resolutions, last-resort | Fallback font
| restricted mode, for output files | Safe filenames
| retrieving TeX | unixtex.ftp
| right-hand side of variable assignments | Config files
| `RISINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| Rokicki, Tom | History
| `root` user | Tilde expansion
| runtime configuration files | Config files
| runtime debugging | Debugging
S
| Sauter fonts, and dynamic source creation | mktex scripts
| scripts for file creation | mktex scripts
| search path, defined | Searching overview
| search, case-insensitive | Casefolding search
| searching for files | File lookup
| searching for glyphs | Glyph lookup
| searching overview | Searching overview
| searching the database | Searching overview
| searching the disk | Searching overview
| security considerations | Security
| SELFAUTODIR | Calling sequence
| SELFAUTOLOC | Calling sequence
| SELFAUTOPARENT | Calling sequence
| sending patches | Bug checklist
| setgid scripts | Global font cache and security
| `SFDFONTS` | Supported file formats
| shell commands, security | Security
| shell variables | Variable expansion
| `shell_escape, example for code` | Programming with config files
| site overrides for `mktex…` | mktex configuration
| skeleton TeX directory | TeX directory structure
| slow startup time | Slow path searching
| `source files` | Supported file formats
| sources for search paths | Path sources
| `special` | Suppressing warnings
| `st_nlink` | Subdirectory expansion
| stack trace | Bug checklist
| standalone path searching | Invoking kpsewhich
| standard error and debugging output | Debugging
| standard options | Standard options
| startup time, excessive | Slow path searching
| string routines | Calling sequence
| `strip` | mktex configuration
| `stripsupplier` | mktex configuration
| `striptypeface` | mktex configuration
| subdirectory searching | Subdirectory expansion
| suffixes, filename | File lookup
| suggestions, making | Introduction
| Sun 2 | History
| supplier directory, omitting | mktex configuration
| supplier directory, omitting | mktex configuration
| supported file formats | Supported file formats
| suppressing warnings | Suppressing warnings
| symbolic links not found | Unable to find files
| symbolic links, and `ls-R` | ls-R
| symlinks, resolving | Calling sequence
| system C compiler bugs | TeX or Metafont failing
| system-dependent casefolding behavior | Casefolding rationale
T
| `T1FONTS` | Supported file formats
| `T1INPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `T42FONTS` | Supported file formats
| `tcfmgr.map` | Specially-recognized files
| TDS | TeX directory structure
| TeX directory structure | TeX directory structure
| TeX environment variables | Supported file formats
| TeX failures | TeX or Metafont failing
| TeX file lookup | File lookup
| TeX glyph lookup | Glyph lookup
| TeX support | TeX support
| TeX Users Group | Introduction
| `TEX_HUSH` | Searching overview
| `TEX_HUSH` | Suppressing warnings
| `tex-file.c` | File lookup
| `tex-file.h` | Programming overview
| `tex-glyph.c` | Glyph lookup
| `tex-glyph.h` | Programming overview
| `tex-k@tug.org` | Mailing lists
| `tex-k@tug.org (bug address)` | Reporting bugs
| `tex.web` | unixtex.ftp
| `TEXBIB` | Supported file formats
| `TEXBIB` | Supported file formats
| `TEXCONFIG` | Supported file formats
| `TEXDOCS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXFONTMAPS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `texfonts.map` | Fontmap
| `TEXFORMATS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXINDEXSTYLE` | Supported file formats
| `TEXINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMF` | TeX directory structure
| `texmf_casefold_search` | Casefolding search
| `TEXMF_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, and `missfont.log`` | mktex script names
| `TEXMF_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, and paranoid output files` | Safe filenames
| `texmf.cnf` | Specially-recognized files
| `texmf.cnf` missing, warning about | Config files
| `texmf.cnf, and variable expansion` | Variable expansion
| `texmf.cnf, definition for` | Config files
| `texmf.cnf, source for path` | Path sources
| `TEXMFCNF` | Config files
| `TEXMFCNF` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMFDBS` | ls-R
| `TEXMFDBS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMFINI` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMFINI` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMFINI` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMFLOG` | Logging
| `TEXMFOUTPUT, and `missfont.log`` | mktex script names
| `TEXMFOUTPUT, and paranoid output files` | Safe filenames
| `TEXMFSCRIPTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXMFSYSVAR` | Safe filenames
| `texmfvar` | mktex configuration
| `TEXMFVAR` | mktex configuration
| `TEXMFVAR` | Safe filenames
| `TEXPICTS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXPKS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXPOOL` | Supported file formats
| `TEXPSHEADERS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXPSHEADERS` | Supported file formats
| `TEXSIZES` | Fallback font
| `TEXSOURCES` | Supported file formats
| `TFMFONTS` | Supported file formats
| tilde expansion | Tilde expansion
| `tilde.c` | Tilde expansion
| `time system call` | Logging
| tolerance for glyph lookup | Basic glyph lookup
| trailing ‘`/`’ in home directory | Tilde expansion
| trailing colons | Default expansion
| translations, of path searching description | Path searching
| `TRFONTS` | Supported file formats
| trick for detecting leaf directories | Subdirectory expansion
| trojan horse | Safe filenames
| trojan horse attack | Security
| `try_std_extension_first` | File lookup
| `TTFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `tug.org` | unixtex.ftp
| typeface directory, omitting | mktex configuration
| typeface directory, omitting | mktex configuration
U
| unable to find files | Unable to find files
| unable to generate fonts | Unable to generate fonts
| `uname` | Bug checklist
| `unixtex.ftp` | unixtex.ftp
| unknown special warnings | Suppressing warnings
| unreadable file warnings | Suppressing warnings
| unreadable files | Searching overview
| unrestricted mode, for output files | Safe filenames
| unusable `ls-R` warning | ls-R
| usage patterns, finding | Logging
| `USE_TEXMFVAR` | mktex configuration
| `USE_VARTEXFONTS` | mktex configuration
| `USERPROFILE, as ~ expansion` | Tilde expansion
V
| `varfonts` | mktex configuration
| variable expansion | Variable expansion
| `variable.c` | Variable expansion
| `variable.h` | Programming with config files
| `VARTEXFONTS` | mktex configuration
| VAX 11/750 | History
| version numbers, determining | Bug checklist
| VF files, not found | Searching overview
| `VFFONTS` | Supported file formats
| Vojta, Paul | History
W
| Walsh, Norman | History
| warning about unusable `ls-R` | ls-R
| warning, about missing `texmf.cnf` | Config files
| warnings, file access | Searching overview
| warnings, suppressing | Suppressing warnings
| `WEB2C` | Supported file formats
| Weber, Olaf | History
| `WEBINPUTS` | Supported file formats
| whitespace, in fontmap files | Fontmap
| whitespace, not ignored on continuation lines | Config files
| Windows and casefolding | Casefolding rationale
| `www.tug.org` | unixtex.ftp
X
| `XDvi` | Specially-recognized files
| `XDVIFONTS` | Supported file formats
| `XDVIMAKEPK` | mktex script names
| `XDVISIZES` | Fallback font
Z
| zuhn, david | History