[tex-k] kpsewhich not searching disk despite !! not being specified

[Yann Salmon]

Hello,

using kpathsea 6.3.0 from TeXLive 2018, I set
TEXMFDBS =
{!!$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFMAIN,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFDIST,$TEXMFHOME}
in my configuration to get kpathsea to follow symlinks in leaf
directories (as per section 8.5.1 of the manual) under $TEXMFHOME.

This works.

However it appears that files present on disk (without a symlink !)
under $TEXMFHOME but not listed in its ls-R are not found anymore, in
spite of $TEXMFHOME not being prefixed with !! in $TEXMF.

This contradicts the last paragraph of section 5.5.1 of the manual :
"if a file is not found in the database, by default Kpathsea goes ahead
and searches the disk. If a particular path element begins with ‘!!’,
however, only the database will be searched".

In the attached kpsewhich.log I am searching for a dummy machin.sty
which is present on the disk under $TEXMFHOME/tex/latex/test/machin.sty
but not listed in the ls-R file.

In the attached kpsewhich2.log, I perform the same operation but with
TEXMFDBS =
{!!$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFMAIN,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFDIST}

--
Yann Salmon
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