kpsewhich(1)

kpsewhich1

Standalone path lookup and and expansion for kpathsea

Usage

kpsewhich [options] [filenames]

Overview

This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete documentation for this version of TeX can be found in the info file or manual Kpathsea: A library for path searching.

kpsewhich is used as a standalone front-end of the kpathsea library that can be used to examine variables and find files. When the -format option is not given, the search path used when looking for a file is inferred from the name given, by looking for a known extension. If no known extension is found, the search path for TeX source files is used.

Options

kpsewhich accepts the following options:

-debug num

Set debugging flags.

-D num

Use a base resolution of num; the default, set by the installer, is typically 600.

-dpi num

As -D.

-engine string

Set $engine in the environment, which is used in some search paths.

-expand-braces string

Print variable and brace expansion of string.

-expand-path string

Print complete path expansion of string.

-expand-var string

Print variable expansion of string.

-format name

Use file type name. See the info manual for a list of valid names, or use the -help option to print the list.

-help

Print help message and exit.

-interactive

Ask for additional filenames to look up.

-mktex fmt

enable mktexfmt generation. (fmt=pk/mf/tex/tfm)

-mode string

Set device name for $MAKETEX_MODE to string; no default.

-must-exist

Search the disk as well as ls-R if necessary.

-no-mktex fmt

disable mktexfmt generation. (fmt=pk/mf/tex/tfm)

-path string

Search in the path string.

-progname string

Set program name to string.

-show-path name

Output search path for file type name. See the info manual for a list of valid names, or use the -help option to print the list.

-var-value variable

Print the expansion of variable.

-version

Print version information and exit.

Releases

16 releases since Debian 2.0 (Hamm); the text changed 14 times.

  1. 2.0–2.1
  2. 2.2
  3. 3.0
  4. 3.1
  5. 4.0
  6. 5.0
  7. 6.0
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. Arch

-help since Debian 4.0 (Etch); -interactive since Debian 4.0 (Etch); -must-exist since Debian 4.0 (Etch); -version since Debian 5.0 (Lenny).

--help until Debian 3.1 (Sarge); --interactive until Debian 3.1 (Sarge); --must-exist until Debian 3.1 (Sarge); --separator until Debian 2.1 (Slink); --version until Debian 3.1 (Sarge).

From texlive-doc 2026.1-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.