[R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex

[John Fox]

Dear Ian,

Thanks for this. Please see below:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Gow [mailto:iandgow at gmail.com]
> Sent: March-15-15 5:07 PM
> To: John Fox
> Cc: r-sig-mac at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
> 
> I think it's driven by the PATH variable, which appears to differ for me
> between RStudio and R from Terminal on the one hand and R.app on the
> other.

Yes, I understand that, though I don't understand why there's a difference
in the path.

> 
> > Sys.getenv("PATH")
> [1] "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin"
> > Sys.which("pdflatex")
> pdflatex
>        ""
> 
> If I add
> 
> Sys.setenv(PATH=paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"),"/opt/local/bin", sep=":"))
> 
> to ~/.Rprofile then R.app finds pdflatex (from MacPorts in my case).
> 
> > Sys.which("pdflatex")
>                   pdflatex
> "/opt/local/bin/pdflatex"
> > Sys.getenv("PATH")
> [1] "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin"

The problem for me is to determine whether pdflatex is installed *without*
knowing in advance where it's installed. I haven't described the purpose of
this, and, in the interest of brevity, won't for the time-being, but it may
also prove necessary to determine where pdflatex resides.

Best,
 John

> 
> 
> On 15 Mar 2015, at 16:46, John Fox wrote:
> 
> > Dear list members,
> >
> > I need to determine whether pdflatex is installed and have been doing
> > that via Sys.which("pdflatex"). This works when R is run in a terminal
> > window (or in RStudio):
> >
> > > Sys.which("pdflatex")
> >            pdflatex
> > "/usr/texbin/pdflatex"
> >
> > but not from R.app:
> >
> > > Sys.which("pdflatex")
> > pdflatex
> >    ""
> >
> > The session info is the same in both cases:
> >
> > -------------- snip ----------------
> >
> >> sessionInfo()
> > R version 3.1.3 (2015-03-09)
> > Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit) Running under: OS X
> > 10.10.2 (Yosemite)
> >
> > locale:
> > [1] en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/C/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-
> 8
> >
> > attached base packages:
> > [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> >
> > -------------- snip ----------------
> >
> > Why is the result different? Is there a better way to check for the
> > presence of pdflatex?
> >
> > Any help would be appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > John
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------
> > John Fox, Professor
> > McMaster University
> > Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
> > http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-SIG-Mac mailing list
> > R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac


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