specify outputfile for pdflatex

Question

pdflatex provides a possibility to specify the output directory:

-output-directory=DIR use DIR as the directory to write files to

I would like to set the output file so that

pdflatex file.tex create a foo.pdf instead of file.pdf

Is that possible?

I found out that the order is important: pdflatex -jobname=foo file.tex OK pdflatex file.tex -jobname=foo FAIL — Viesturs, Jun 21 '18 at 12:37
Cannot confirm this. For me any of pdflatex -jobname=foo -output-directory=bar file.tex and pdflatex -output-directory=bar -jobname=foo file.tex produces bar/foo.pdf. — AlexG, Jun 21 '18 at 12:41
@AlexG, it is important that file.tex succedes all of the options. — Viesturs, Jun 21 '18 at 12:42
More general case of jobname - How to influence the name of the pdf file created with pdfLaTeX (from within the source code)? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange . — user202729, Feb 02 '24 at 09:13

AlexG · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-18T13:23:29.147

34

According to the command line help (pdflatex -help), pdflatex is to be invoked as

pdftex [OPTION]... [TEXNAME[.tex]] [COMMANDS]

with all options preceeding the source file argument.

In addition to changing the output directory, the default output file name can be altered by modifying the internal \jobname register through command option -jobname=STRING:

pdflatex -output-directory=DIR -jobname=STRING FILE

The order of options does not matter here, but FILE comes last.

edited Jul 18 '18 at 13:23

answered Jul 18 '18 at 13:16

AlexG

54,894

3

if you say \jobname is an internal register, could I modify it also inside the tex document? – Viesturs Jul 18 '18 at 14:05
5

@Viesturs No, \jobname is read only. – egreg Jul 18 '18 at 14:06

specify outputfile for pdflatex

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