Re: "new" \input vs. primitive behavior

On 29/07/2023 12:21, LARONDE Thierry wrote:
> But this is exactly my question: is it enough for LaTeX?

For latex, the only requirement is that all the file primitives use the
same search  so \xxx{foooo}

refers to the same file if \xxx is \input or \(pdf}filesize or whatever.
{note luatex and web2c engines accept \input{...} with braces at the
primitive level.)

latex also assumes it can use double quotes to guard spaces \input "a b
c .tex" and can use utf-8 filenames {although it won't generate

such file names unless the input files already use them,}


Historically latex could not be proscriptive here as it ran on operating
systems with no extension (sty, cls were implemented as a folder

cls/article)  on flat file systems with no directories, and other
variants. For many years though now, web2c based systems have dominated and

mostly file handling has normalised on the "/" path separator, "."
extension and spaces allowed via " quoting. (kpathsea has no way to
input a file with a " in its name)


So if the handling of search paths or extensionless files differs in
your implementation, that will not affect latex as a system but may
affect some edge case packages

or documents inputting Makefile or whatever, but that has always been a
possibility that filenames on one system are illegal on another.


David




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