[OS X TeX] MacTeX installation

[Bill Northcott]

On 25/01/2008, at 7:00 AM, David Airey wrote:
> The reason I ask is because some R scripts also told me I don't have a
> working TeX installation or that my PATH is not set appropriately. So
> I'm wondering if Gerben Wierda's scripts failed?
> I'm using Leopard 10.5.1.

To which Dick Koch replied
>
> You can easily test this. Open Terminal in /Applications/Utilities.  
> Type
>
> 	echo $PATH

This horribly misleading.  I see so many people confused about PATH  
and other environment variables in MacOS.

R is usually started as the R gui app double clicked in the Finder or  
clicked in the dock.  Dick Koch's instructions will show you the PATH  
in a shell.  This is what the Tex installers modify.

To see the PATH within the R gui app use 'Sys.getenv("PATH")'   If you  
try both, you will see they are not the same.

Unlike most UNIX flavours, most processes on MacOS are not launched  
from a shell and so do not have the environment of a shell.  If you  
need specific environment in R set it up in an R script with  
Sys.putenv().

Bill Northcott