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I run a sequence of latex commands from a bash script. Since the latex output polutes the scripts own output I would like to suppress it. But sending the output to /dev/null will make the latex process inaccesible for the user. Hence it could be killed only manually in case there is a compilation error. How can I control latex from within the script. I.e. suppress the output and exit the process in case of error.

highsciguy
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    Did you try pdflatex --interaction=batchmode? – egreg Jul 16 '12 at 15:27
  • Try this: pdflatex -halt-on-error file.tex 1> /dev/null [[ $? -eq 1 ]] && echo "msg in case of erros" && exit

    With this, in case of errors, the msg will appear. Otherwise, the output will be send to null.

     – Sigur Jul 16 '12 at 16:45
  • @Thiago this appears to work, but hangs if the file.tex doesn't exist (which is one possible error). – Bruno Le Floch Jul 17 '12 at 16:08
  • So you can try to check first if the file exists. The variable $? has the result of any command. Usually it could be zero or not. You can test it. – Sigur Jul 17 '12 at 19:58
  • I am using now latex --interaction=nonstopmode "file.tex" &>/dev/null. Then I check the exit state in $?. The halt-on-error is not appropriate for me as I don't want it to stop for errors in individual files (if there are nasty errors in many files it can take me ages to confirm all of them). Whats the difference to --interaction=batchmode? – highsciguy Jul 18 '12 at 08:56
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    @Sigur Can you turn your comments into an answer, please? – egreg Nov 03 '12 at 22:12
  • Did you try to use yes? E.g., yes '^D' | pdflatex "$file" (where ^D is input with Ctrl+V+Ctrl+D). With this, if pdflatex is waiting for some input, it receives a nice EOF, so user doesn't need to kill it. -halt-on-error fails if file doesn't exists or if it never finishes... – gniourf_gniourf Nov 03 '12 at 23:58

1 Answers1

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As asked above by egreg, I'm turning my comments into answer.

I'm using this command om my script and I'm satisfied with it.

pdflatex -halt-on-error file.tex 1> /dev/null 
[[ $? -eq 1 ]] && echo "msg in case of erros" && exit

In case of errors, the msg will appear. Otherwise, the output will be send to null.

Now, you can try to improve with a command to search for your file before running pdflatex.

Sigur
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    Not the best bash I've seen in my life... 1> is funny, so is the && exit. Also, [[ $? -eq 1 ]] is not the best idea, just in case pdflatex returns another (non-zero) code. How about (( $? )) && echo "msg in case of errors" instead ? – gniourf_gniourf Nov 04 '12 at 00:00
  • I don't know. For me, it works! But if there are better solutions, thanks for helping. – Sigur Nov 04 '12 at 00:58