[tex-live] Format file in quotes not parsed by pdflatex

[Zdenek Wagner]

2013/5/18 David Carlisle <d.p.carlisle at gmail.com>:
> Philip asked
>
>
>> is why quotes might be expected to work when we are dealing
>> with TeX.
>
> Mainly because they have worked that way for \input for a long time
>
>
>>     foo^^20bar
>>
>
> I wouldn't expect ^^ notation to work,  Here you are looking before you have
> loaded the format so ^ has catcode 12 and in places where ^^ does work it is
> changed to a space very early \input a^^20b  is same as \input a b and
> inputs a.tex and typesets b (and not the same as \input "a b" which inputs
> "a b.tex"
>
Indeed, ^^ notation cannot help. It is interpreted early by the TeX's
mouth but \input is processed by TeX's stomach. Both ^^` and ^^20 will
produce the same space token. In section 516 of the web2c source ASCII
character 32 is checked to be the end of file name. Another
possibility to end a file name is to use an unexpandable control
sequence such as \relax. In other words, in Knuth's TeX it is
impossible to use a space in the file name. Quoted name is an
extension that was introduced some time ago.

> David
>
>



--
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz