[tex-live] bug report - bibtex BIBINPUTS error, Ubuntu hardy, texlive 2007-13

[Michael Greenfield]

Dear TeX Live maintainers,

I just found an interesting bibtex problem with retrieving a citation from 
a filename.bib file stored in a remote directory.

In short, a citation in a latex file could not be found unless I removed 
an initial colon from the BIBINPUTS variable or inserted an underscore 
into the filename.bib name.  The simplest latex file that replicates the 
error is appended below.

* Background:

Based on a working tetex setup on an older computer, my BIBINPUTS env 
variable (in tcsh) was

   BIBINPUTS=:~/tex/texinputs

and the bibtex entry was stored in a file

   ~/tex/texinputs/books.bib

This setup had been working for me for approximately 10 years of 
latex/bibtex use with tetex.

* Case 1: search for citation fails with TeX Live.

   - env variable defined as
    BIBINPUTS=:~/tex/texinputs

   - citation stored in ~/tex/texinputs/books.bib

   - bibliography invoked in latex file as
    \bibliography{books}

* Case 2: search for citation succeeds after I rename the .bib file so it
   includes an underscore

   - env variable defined as
    BIBINPUTS=:~/tex/texinputs

   - citation stored in ~/tex/texinputs/b_books.bib

   - bibliography invoked in latex file as
    \bibliography{b_books}

* Case 3: search for citation succeeds after I remove the initial colon in
   the BIBINPUTS definition

   - env variable defined as
     BIBINPUTS=~/tex/texinputs

   - citation stored in ~/tex/texinputs/books.bib

   - bibliography invoked in latex file as
    \bibliography{books}

The latex file and bibtex entry are below.

I am using the workaround of removing the colon in BIBINPUTS.  It seemed 
like a bug worth reporting to the TeX Live community in case others are 
affected.

Mike


--------- bibtex entry: -----------------------

@Book{McCrum97a,
   author = 	 "N. G. {McCrum} and C. P. Buckley and C. B. Bucknall",
   title = 	 "Principles of Polymer Engineering",
   publisher = 	 "Oxford University Press",
   year = 	 1997,
   address = 	 "Oxford",
   edition = 	 "2nd"
}

--------- latex file: -----------------------

\documentclass[12pt,titlepage]{article}

\begin{document}

This is a citation to McCrum \cite{McCrum97a}.

\bibliography{books}
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}

\end{document}