[pdftex] Directory Names with Spaces

[Hans Hagen]

At 12:23 AM 12/21/2001 +0100, Fabrice Popineau wrote:
>* Thierry Bouche <thierry.bouche at ujf-grenoble.fr> writes:
>
> > I heard that CmacTeX has a trick so that file names spaces may be
> > accessed as nobreak spaces. (maybe only in config files, though)
> > could this be implemented in fptex?
>
>I have done something along this way (wanted to experiment !) It
>worked almost ok. But the real problem is that you can put anything on
>the command line, so how do you make the distinction between a file
>name and tex commands ? The problem is that we need a quoting
>mechanism for file names inside tex, and there is none for the moment.

since most people use some sort of wrapper, it can be an option to do 
something like:

   original name : crap crap (with space)

converted by macro package into

   internal name : crap%crap (users will not use themselves % probably)

before opening the file fptex can replace the % by a space.

something like:

\def\makecrappyfilename#1%
   {\begingroup
    \count0=0
    \loop
      \lccode\count0=\count0
      \advance\count0 1
      \ifnum\count0<256
    \repeat
    \lccode`\ =`\%
    \lowercase{\xdef\crappyfilename{#1}}
    \endgroup}

\makecrappyfilename{crap crap}

\input \crappyfilename\relax

[another option is to replace the space by the unicode alternative or some 
other escaping; rather trivial, so feel free to mail me off lin on this]

Hans

PS. Personally i think that spaces in filenames are as bad as not treating 
lower/uppercase chars the same; For me Crap.tex == crap.tex)



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