Re: Passing a string via texexec

["Gregory D. Collins" <gcollins@cs.yale.edu>]

John Culleton wrote:
> This is more of a convenience feature than a necessity, but here goes. 
> 
> I plan to personalize copies of an ebook in pdf format by putting the
> string:
> "This copy prepared for Joe Smith" on the page, perhaps in a footer.
> This means I have to recompile the book for each separate customer. It
> would save a minute if I could just pass a named string to pdfetex in
> the same way one passes a mode to the program. I am looking for
> something like:
> texexec --mode=ebook --string="Joe Smith" mybook.tex
> 
> ...and then have a way to pick up that string in the TeX file and use
> it. 
> 
> All this does is save me from editing the file in every instance. If
> it is too big a deal forget it. 

You can solve this using scripting.

In your TeX file:

...\input{name}...

On the command line (in Windows): put then names in names.txt, then:

for /f %i in (names.txt) do @echo %i > name.tex && texexec --pdf foo.tex 
&& ren foo.pdf "%i.pdf"

In the Bourne shell:

for i in `cat names.txt`; do echo $i > name.tex; texexec --pdf 
foo.tex; 	mv foo.pdf "$i.pdf"; done

-- 
Gregory D. Collins <gcollins@cs.yale.edu>
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