Duplicate filenames

Different files by the same name may exist in a TDS tree. The TDS generally leaves unspecified which of two files by the same name in a search path will be found, so generally the only way to reliably find a given file is for it to have a unique name. However, the TDS requires implementations to support the following exceptions:

• Names of TeX input files must be unique within each first-level subdirectory of `texmf/tex' and `texmf/tex/generic', but not within all of `texmf/tex'; i.e., different TeX formats may have files by the same name. (Section section Macros discusses this further.) Thus, no single format-independent path specification, such as a recursive search beginning at `texmf/tex' specifying no other directories, suffices. So implementations must provide format-dependent path specifications, for example via wrapper scripts or configuration files.
• Many font files will have the same name (e.g., `cmr10.pk'), as discussed in Section section Valid font bitmaps. Implementations must distinguish these files by mode and resolution.

All implementations we know of already have these capabilities.

One place where duplicate names are likely to occur is not an exception:

• Names of METAFONT input files (as opposed to bitmaps) must be unique within all of `texmf/fonts'. In practice, this is a problem with some variants of Computer Modern which contain slightly modified files named `punct.mf', `romanl.mf', and so on. We believe the only feasible solution is to rename the derivative files to be unique.

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