[tex-k] kpathsea problem with expansion of environment variables

[Robin Fairbairns]

Greger Leijonhufvud <Greger.Leijonhufvud at intecbilling.com> wrote:

> We get a problem running tex  (TeX 3.141592 (Web2C 7.5.4) , as
> environment variables are not expanded . Works well with kpsewhich
> 3.3.1.

you're using tetex 3 (or similar), which hasn't been maintained for some
time.  upgrading to the current tex-live would probably be for the better.

i wrote a little package that deals with this (*very* old) issue for
\input, and i've just put it on my personal web page, with docs, in the
directory

 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rf10/tex/envvar

envvarinput.sty only works with \input{$foo/file}, but you could
trivially adapt it to work with the (even more archaic) epsf.tex you
seem to be using...

robin fairbairns

[why didn't i put it on ctan? -- well, it never occurred to me that
anyone other than final-year research students would get themselves into
the situation where they might need such a package.  and the change
happened in 2004...]

[aiui, the env variable facility was never documented, and i was rather
surprised when one of my users came and asked for help with it.]