[R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex

[Ian Gow]

John:

It might be useful to see how TeX editors (TeXShop, TeXWorks, Texpad, etc.) do this. I guess if there’s a way, these programs would use it.

Other software I have seen use a “look in all the usual locations” approach to solve a similar problem.

Finally, I can find a few using locate. It seems I a few versions lying around on my computer:

Mac-Pro:~ igow$ locate pdflatex | grep -e \/pdflatex$
/Volumes/mac_part/opt/local/bin/pdflatex
/Volumes/mac_part/opt/local/libexec/texlive/texbin/pdflatex
/Volumes/mac_part/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/universal-darwin/pdflatex
/Volumes/mac_part/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-darwin/pdflatex
/opt/local/bin/pdflatex
/opt/local/libexec/texlive/texbin/pdflatex

But in fact, I probably just have two versions. In R:
> pdftexs <- system(" locate pdflatex | grep -e \\/pdflatex$", intern=TRUE)
> 
> 
get_version <- function(path) {

+ 
 return(system(paste(path, " --version"), intern=TRUE)[1])

+ 
}

> 
> 
cbind(pdftexs, unlist(lapply(pdftexs, get_version)))

    pdftexs                                                                 
[1,] "/Volumes/mac_part/opt/local/bin/pdflatex"                              
[2,] "/Volumes/mac_part/opt/local/libexec/texlive/texbin/pdflatex"           
[3,] "/Volumes/mac_part/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/universal-darwin/pdflatex"
[4,] "/Volumes/mac_part/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-darwin/pdflatex"   
[5,] "/opt/local/bin/pdflatex"                                               
[6,] "/opt/local/libexec/texlive/texbin/pdflatex"                            

[1,] "pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014/MacPorts 2014_6)"
[2,] "pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014/MacPorts 2014_6)"
[3,] "pdfTeX 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12 (TeX Live 2011)"                 
[4,] "pdfTeX 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12 (TeX Live 2011)"                 
[5,] "pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014/MacPorts 2014_6)"
[6,] "pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014/MacPorts 2014_6)"



-Ian

> On Mar 15, 2015, at 6:21 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
> 
> 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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