Does info
(GNU texinfo 4.13) have a default search path for finding a dir
file? Is it /usr/share/info
? Even though I don't have an INFOPATH
variable set in my environment, it seems to use the dir
file in the path above.
Relatedly, I have a script that sets up a directory with an alternate info directory structure. It does set a valid INFOPATH
environment variable but info
seems not to use it as invocation simply gives a blank screen without any menu items.
Any guidance on how info
progresses in searching the path?
Best Answer
Yes,
info
does have a default value forINFOPATH
compiled-in that it uses if you don't haveINFOPATH
set in your environment. (Also, if yourINFOPATH
ends with a colon, then the default path is appended to your value.)The default
DEFAULT_INFOPATH
is.:/usr/local/info:/usr/info:/usr/local/lib/info:/usr/lib/info:/usr/local/gnu/info:/usr/local/gnu/lib/info:/usr/gnu/info:/usr/gnu/lib/info:/opt/gnu/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/share/lib/info:/usr/local/share/info:/usr/local/share/lib/info:/usr/gnu/lib/emacs/info:/usr/local/gnu/lib/emacs/info:/usr/local/lib/emacs/info:/usr/local/emacs/info
(but it can be changed by definingDEFAULT_INFOPATH
while compilinginfo
).There's also a
INFODIR
variable that can be set while compilinginfo
. If set, it gets included in the path after theINFOPATH
environment variable but before theDEFAULT_INFOPATH
.I don't know any way of asking your
info
program what values it was compiled with. (Although you can probably find the actual value ofDEFAULT_INFOPATH
with this command:)