#1138 Inline preview fails with comma in directory path

[Anonymous]

Inline preview fails with something like

Process started: latex -src -interaction=nonstopmode "nS2711".tex

Process started: dvipng --follow -T tight -D 120 "nS2711".dvi

Process exited with error(s)

if

1. The directory path contains commas (whitespace, parenthesis don't matter).
2. The header contains \input statements.

To reproduce unpack minimal-example.tar.gz.

Inside ./dir,with,comma/test,compiletest.tex previewing the equation failed. Viewing the log file of the temporary latex file in /tmp/ shows that the header file couldn't be found.

Inside ./normal-dir (paren whitespace okay)/test,compiletest.tex preview of the equation succeeded.

The same effect is seen when the directory name contains ";", "{" or "}", indicating that some shell command might be incorrectly quoted, though curiously whitespace and parentheses are fine.

Workaround: Rename directories...

[Klaus]

Forgot to mention:
- Linux Mint 14.04 32bit
- Compiling the latest .tar.gz release did not change the behaviour.

[Tim Hoffmann]

The reason for the failure is as follows: Since the preview is compiled in a temporary directory, one has to provide the paths for additional inputs. We do this by adding the path of the original document to TEXINPUTS (i.e. ./dir,with,comma/ in your case).

Appartently, kpathsea does not handle such paths correctly, as can be seen with the following debug code:

export TEXINPUTS=/home/tim/txs/tests/comma/dir,with,comma:.:
export KPATHSEA_DEBUG=8`
cd /tmp
latex hBL6335.tex

The result shows that the comma is replaced by a colon and thus the path is broken:

kdebug:Search path for tex files (from TEXINPUTS environment variable)
kdebug:  = /home/tim/txs/tests/comma/dir:with:comma:.: (... and more paths)

This is a problem with kpathsea and there doesn't seem to be a solution.

Note: Found the same question here
Note 2: It works with MikTeX on windows because MikTeX does not rely on kpathsea but has a path search of its own.