Date:	Thu, 30 Oct 1997 17:58:26 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	Olivier PERRON <olivier DOT perron AT art DOT alcatel DOT fr>
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: In TeX, what is the default value for $TEXINPUTS ?
In-Reply-To:	<3458487F.34DA@art.alcatel.fr>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.971030174502.5238D-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Olivier PERRON wrote:

> I needed to know this value, because the installing process needs to use
> some specific directories BEFORE the standards one. The way to do this
> is to set the TEXINPUTS variable and declaring the specific directories
> FIRST.

There are better ways, all of them described in the docs.  You really 
should spend some time reading the (excellent, IMHO) documentation of the 
Kpathsea library used by all TeX programs to search for files.  It 
describes all the various ways of customizing search paths.  From the DOS 
prompt, type "info kpathsea" and read there.

The easiest way to customize $TEXINPUTS is to edit the file 
%DJDIR%/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf (where %DJDIR% is the top of your 
TeX/DJGPP installation).

>  After very long multiple tries, I found that a default setting for
> TEXINPUTS could be :
> $TEXMF/tex/plain/base;$TEXMF/tex/latex/misc/base;$TEXMF/tex/generic/hyphen

This is close, but not entirely correct.  The default value of TEXINPUTS
is ".;$TEXMF/tex//".  The double-slash at the end means that ALL the
subdirectories of $TEXMF/tex are also recursively searched. 

Btw, I don't understand why did you need ``long multiple tries'' to find 
that out.  The package has a program called `kpsewhich' exactly for these 
cases.  It took me, like, two seconds to get the answer using the 
folloiwng command:

	kpsewhich -expand-var=$TEXINPUTS

Again, you should read the docs to know about these possibilities.  TeX 
is a very complex package, and you really shouldn't try changing the 
default setup without reading the docs.

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