Re: info utility: buggy resolution of cross references

> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:00:55 +0100
> From: Vincent Lefevre <[email protected]>
> 
> On 2026-02-23 20:46:15 +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > I tested this with a directory that contained just info-stnd.info 
> > and an empty file called "texinfo", with the link from info-stnd.info
> > to the "texinfo" manual.  (I don't have info.info on my system as
> > this file is distributed with Emacs and I am not an Emacs user.)
> 
> Sorry, I got confused. I've just noticed that when I type
> "info info", I actually get "info-stnd.info" instead of
> "info.info". If order to get "info.info", I need to type
> "info info.info". This implicit ".info" is really misleading.

People forget that "info FOO" does _not_ mean "show the file FOO".
Instead, it means "find manual named FOO in the info DIR file, and
show that manual".  The Info reader has a heuristic of assuming the
user meant the file FOO if DIR doesn't have any entry for FOO a
manual, but that's fallback.  If you really want toshow the file FOO,
you say "info -f FOO".  Then the Info reader will find info.info
without your having to type the extension explicitly

> Moreover, after just typing "info", I get a menu with
> 
> [...]
> Texinfo documentation system
> * Info: (info).                 How to use the documentation browsing system.
> * Texinfo: (texinfo).           The GNU documentation format.
> * info stand-alone: (info-stnd).
>                                 Read Info documents without Emacs.
> [...]
> 
> and here, "info" corresponds to "info.info" as expected.

Yes, because the extension does not need to be explicit, but only when
you reference a file name.  A command "info info" does not.

> And the fact that "info.info" comes from Emacs is also misleading
> (perhaps they should change that).

Why is it misleading?