File names

[David Carlisle]

> I've tried fiddling with catcodes to get TeX to input
> and so far I've failed.
> Can anyone else figure out a way to do this?

You can not do it.
Some tex systems allow filenames with spaces to be used on the top level
file passed to tex by the operating system, but tex's \input does not
allow spaces. catcodes do not come into it. a character code of 32 will
stop the scan whatever the catcode.

> The spaces-in-filenames culture is probably unstoppable; so I'm
> inclined to think that TeX should accommodate it, e.g. by allowing
> file names in quotes. 

TeX won't change. etex or pdftex though could choose a more sensible
mechanism. Quotes seems like a bad idea, why not just a normal
catcode-1 catcode-2 group ie {} normally.

David