Package or macro for converting Windows/DOS paths

Question

If I to include a graphic I have to manually replace backslashes '\' with slashes '/', which isn't very convenient especially if the path is long. But Latex is all about convenience and automation, right?

So I wonder if the a macro/package that would take a Windows path and replace backslashes with slashes and return it, preferably could handle sdpaces in the path. Intended use for including graphics and listings like this

\includegraphics{"\windowspath{my path1\my path2\my image.png}"}
\lstinputlisting{"\windowspath{my path1\my path2\myscript.m}"}

I found something similar here but it seems to define the converted path as a new variable, rather then returning it.

It should be rather rare to ever need a full path, \includegraphics{"my image"} would be enough in most cases. The syntax you suggest would be very tricky as the space after \my is never tokenised it will have been absorbed while tex parsed the command \my so while you could detokenise the string and turn \to / you can not reliably tell if there should be a space after \my — David Carlisle, Nov 07 '17 at 19:17
why do you have to "replace \ with / ? How did the original string get entered? I ask as it would be better to fix that process so the / version gets entered into the file. — David Carlisle, Nov 07 '17 at 19:27
I have good and bad news. The good: it is easily possible to write a macro which contains paths with \ in them and return the same path with / instead of \. The bad: it won't work in \input and I don't think it would in \includegraphics or similar. — Skillmon, Nov 07 '17 at 19:44
@Skillmon you can probably do it expandably so it works in input and includegraphics, but spaces are an issue and I'm not sure why it would be needed. — David Carlisle, Nov 07 '17 at 19:50
@DavidCarlisle I don't manage to make the macro expandable, atm, but spaces aren't an issue in it (while expandability certainly is). — Skillmon, Nov 07 '17 at 19:58
Aren't TeX implementation on Windows accepting / as path delimiter instead of \? — egreg, Dec 03 '17 at 14:55

Steven B. Segletes · Answer 1 · 2017-11-07T20:07:02.107

1

The listofitems package can convert the backslashes and preserve the spaces (even if they immediately follow the \!). However, the name itself cannot be within a group, as was shown in the OP's example.

However, converting this demonstration to a usable macro will still take a bit of work.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{listofitems,lmodern}
\begin{document}
{
\catcode`?=0 %
?catcode`\\=12 %
?setsepchar{\}
?greadlist?nameA{"\windowspath\my path1\ my path2\my image.png"}
?greadlist?nameB{"\windowspath\my path1\my path2\myscript.m}
}
\foreachitem\i\in\nameA{\ifnum\icnt=1\else/\fi\detokenize\expandafter{\i}}

\foreachitem\i\in\nameB{\ifnum\icnt=1\else/\fi\detokenize\expandafter{\i}}
\end{document}

edited Nov 07 '17 at 20:07

answered Nov 07 '17 at 20:02

Steven B. Segletes

237,551

Will it be possible to create a single expandable macro from this? I don't think so, because of the necessary cat-code changes. – Skillmon Nov 07 '17 at 20:06
@Skillmon That's the hard part, isn't it. – Steven B. Segletes Nov 07 '17 at 20:06
I have little idea on (La)TeX internals, but isn't it possible to temporarily change the catcode, perform the transformation, and then change it back? – Andrey Pro Dec 02 '17 at 13:56
@AndreyPro The way I have set it up, it does that. I placed the \catcode changes inside a group{...}. Once leaving the group, the \catcodes revert to their original settings. Inside the group, I made sure to use \greadlist which is a \global form of \readlist, so that the list survives leaving the group, even as the \catcodes do not survive leaving the group. – Steven B. Segletes Dec 02 '17 at 16:41
@AndreyPro you can't usefully change the catcodes after the characters have been read, so any such command is like \verb and can not be used in the argument of another command, which makes it more or less unusable for \input or \includegraphics etc. – David Carlisle Dec 02 '17 at 17:41

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 07 '17 at 20:11

1

The simplest way is probably just to locally define any macros you need to generate the file path

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}


zzz

\clearpage

{\def\c{/c}\def\tmp{/tmp}\def\my{/my" "}\def\picture{/picture}

\typeout{test:}
\includegraphics{\c\tmp\my pics\picture.png}

}


\end{document}

inputs the file \c\tmp\my pics\picture.png as seen from the log:

...
[2 </c/tmp/my pics/picture.png>] (./file.aux) )

   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(see the transcript file for additional information)</usr/local/texlive/2017/te
xmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr10.pfb>
Output written on file.pdf (2 pages, 75385 bytes).
Transcript written on file5.log.

answered Nov 07 '17 at 20:11

David Carlisle

757,742

This is no better than do it manually. The whole point is to be able to copy paste the path from Windows Explorer and have the Latex to transform it. – Andrey Pro Dec 02 '17 at 13:42
@AndreyPro I'm not sure that it's reasonable to expect things to be copied from one system to another and be legal syntax in the result – David Carlisle Dec 02 '17 at 13:46
Of course not per default, that is why asked for a macro that would be able to translate between them. – Andrey Pro Dec 02 '17 at 13:59
@AndreyPro but doing it within tex requires the to be legal syntax.... – David Carlisle Dec 02 '17 at 14:15

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 07 '17 at 21:09

A somewhat simple implementations in expl3 could be the following. Note however, that it isn't fully expandable and therefore doesn't work in \input and the like:

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{expl3}

\ExplSyntaxOn
\newcommand*{\windowspath}[1]{
  \str_set:Nn \l_tmpa_str { #1 }
  \regex_replace_all:nnN { \\ } { / } \l_tmpa_str
  \str_use:N \l_tmpa_str}
\ExplSyntaxOff

\begin{document}
\windowspath{\fo o.tex}

%\input{\windowspath{\f o}}
\end{document}

Package or macro for converting Windows/DOS paths

3 Answers3