[OS X TeX] finding a file

Wed Aug 15 14:30:24 EDT 2012

Thanks to a long list of people who responded.  I am now more confused than ever.

Of all the suggested terminal commands (find / -name calculus.bib 2>/dev/null, kpsewhich --show-path=bib | tr : '\n' | sort, mdfind -name caculus.bib), the only one that elicited any response was kpsewhich calculus.bib.  This actually found
a file, in a place I recall once having had:
/Users/zbigniewnitecki/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib/calculus.bib
and is entirely logical.

It took me a while to remember how to access my user Library, but finally remembered about "Go" with "option/alt".
So I managed to get in to /Users/zbigniewnitecki/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib/ and got that version of calculus.bib to be the same as the one I had already updated.

But I wanted to be able to work on it from several different locations, so I tried to put calculus.bib (or the folder "bib" or all of texmf) on dropbox.

I had already (apparently successfully) put my style files on dropbox, and they have been working fine.
So I took the "bib" folder from texmf and put it in my dropbox folder.  This seemed odd (given the other folders there)
so I created a folder "Style Files" in dropbox, put "bib" there as well as the folder "Macros", which was already on dropbox but at a higher level.  Now TeXShop won't compile, claiming it can't find the main macro file in "Macros", called basicmacros.sty.  So I moved "Macros" back to where it used to be, at the top level of my dropbox folder.  But now TExShop still can't find it.  I haven't gotten around to checking the story with the bib files.

So what is the proper procedure to get a folder on dropbox to remain accessible from different computers, but also so it lives on my TeX tree, so TeXShop can see it?

On Aug 15, 2012, at 12:15, Herbert Schulz wrote:

On Aug 15, 2012, at 11:01 AM, M A <markoilcan at gmail.com<mailto:markoilcan at gmail.com>> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:19 PM, Thomas Bohn <thbohn at gmail.com<mailto:thbohn at gmail.com>> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Nitecki, Zbigniew H.
<Zbigniew.Nitecki at tufts.edu<mailto:Zbigniew.Nitecki at tufts.edu>> wrote:

A booklength project which I have been working on for years calls (via bibtex) a file called calculus.bib.

My suggestion, is to use Terminal.app and the command:

find / -name calculus.bib 2>/dev/null

It's far more efficient to do

mdfind -name caculus.bib

especially if you have a large hard drive.

Mark A

Howdy,

To find the calculus.bib file, assuming that it is found when you compile a file that uses it, I'd use the previously suggested

kpsewhich calculus.bib

command in Terminal since that is how (pdf/xe/lua)(la)tex finds the files requested by a document during compilation.

If you're not interested in finding file contents I'd stay away from Spotlight. My favorite file finder is `Find Any File' ($7.99 on the App Store and worth every penny) since it quickly find files anywhere on the Disk (e.g., Spotlight will not `find' files in /usr).

I would definitely not use `find ...` since that will take forever as it recursively searches all directories from scratch.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)

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