no appropriate script or program found: fmtutil

[Yihui Xie]

Hi,

Since about three weeks ago, I have been receiving reports that contain the
error message "no appropriate script or program found: fmtutil" from
Windows users when calling `fmtutil-sys.exe --all`, e.g.,
https://github.com/yihui/yihui.org/discussions/1089#discussioncomment-7265373
(you can search for the error message on this page to see other similar
reports)

>From my limited understanding, the error seems to be from this line:
https://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/bin/windows/runscript.tlu?revision=68579&view=markup#l864
The variable `progname` is `fmtutil` (fmtutil-sys.exe -> fmtutil-sys ->
fmtutil), but none of the extensions in `extlist` works because only
`fmtutil.exe` exists (but `extlist` doesn't include `.exe`):
https://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/bin/windows/ I don't really
understand Lua, and I'm not sure if my diagnosis is correct.

Another issue that might be relevant (apologies if not) is that calling
executables by their short paths (Windows 8+3 names) doesn't work, as I
mentioned to Norbert last week:
https://github.com/rstudio/tinytex/issues/427#issuecomment-1785546973 That
is, executing FMTUTI~1.EXE doesn't work, although it's a valid path name on
Windows. In this case, `progname` would be `FMTUTI~1`, which understandably
can't be found. If possible, the path should be converted to its canonical
form beforehand. I'm not sure if this was a recent change, but I started to
receive this type of report only recently.

Thanks!

Regards,
Yihui
--
https://yihui.org
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