🚀 go-pugleaf

I seem to have started a thread with my question about file manipulation from
within TeX. Let me add two more cents worth. (\$0.04 total)

I do not necessarily believe TeX would be _improved_ by such capabilities.
Nevertheless, some of the criticism of the idea seems unconvincing.
Let me make clear that I do not advocate _adding_ such facilities to TeX,
and I certainly do not want to add any system dependencies to the TeX
language. Nevertheless, the executable file (tex.exe on my PC) is
_completely_ system dependent and (I expect) it already has the capability
to create and delete its own temporary files. (Try turning off your PC
during a job and look in your TEMP directory.) Thus, including such things
in the _language_ TeX would at most add a few control sequences to TeX and
would not greatly impact memory usage. Those who said they prefered to use
batch files or shell scripts to handle file cleanup are correct. That is
the way I do it. Nevertheless, a style file designer might conceivably want
to create temporary files not needed for subsequent runs and might wish s/he
could delete them before the end of a job. Or perhaps back-up a previously
created file (by renaming) before writing a new version. I can't think of
reasons myself (never having tried to design a style), but I can conceive
of the possibility.

There may be very good reasons Knuth did not include a few extra file
manipulation commands in TeX, but I have not yet heard any.

Dan Luecking.