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 <j...@mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>
> Dear Ian,
>
> Thanks for this. Please see below:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ian Gow [mailto:iand...@gmail.com]
>> Sent: March-15-15 5:07 PM
>> To: John Fox
>> Cc: r-sig-mac@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@r-project.org
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>
>
> ---
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