[pdftex] kpathsea environment variables

[Thomas Esser]

Hi Geoffrey,

> 	Is there any way to query kpathsea to find out what environment 
> variables it knows about?  I'm trying to write some software that 

One can define arbitrary variables in a config file (texmf.cnf) and
each of them can be overwritten by an environment variable. Even more,
a variable foo in a config file can be overwritten by by the envvar
foo and foo_<progname> if <progname> is the string that the program has
given as argument to kpse_set_program_name() during initialization.

Example:

  $ TEXPOOL_foo=funny; export TEXPOOL_foo
  $ tex -ini -progname foo tex.ini
  ! I can't read tex.pool; bad path?

This invocation of tex has made use of the envvar TEXPOOL_foo (the path
funny is invalid and thus, tex.pool cannot be found).

> interacts with pdfTeX, etc. and it would be useful to know which 
> environment variables the user provides will be significant when 
> executing kpathsea aware programs as subprocesses.  Thanks!

I strongly suggest that you read the full kpathsea manual (texdoc
kpathsea).

Thomas