(kpathsea.info)Database format

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5.5.3 Database format
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The "database" read by Kpathsea is a line-oriented file of plain text.
The format is that generated by GNU (and most other) 'ls' programs given
the '-R' option, as follows.

   * Blank lines are ignored.

   * If a line begins with '/' or './' or '../' and ends with a colon,
     it's the name of a directory.  ('../' lines aren't useful, however,
     and should not be generated.)

   * All other lines define entries in the most recently seen directory.
     /'s in such lines will produce possibly-strange results.

   * Files with no preceding directory line are ignored.

   For example, here's the first few lines of 'ls-R' (which totals about
30K bytes) on my system:

     bibtex
     dvips
     fonts
     ls-R
     metafont
     metapost
     tex
     web2c

     ./bibtex:
     bib
     bst
     doc

     ./bibtex/bib:
     asi.bib
     btxdoc.bib
     ...