macOS LaTeX From Command Line

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Hi all,

I've been using LaTeX for a while now with the TeXShop program, but lately I've been doing a lot of programming work and have started to really enjoy using the Emacs editor, so I thought I'd try to start writing my LaTeX documents in it. What I want to do is be able to open terminal, write the documents in LaTeX, and then typeset them in pdf format (ideally opening up a preview window with the document at the same time), all from the command line. However, after writing the document, when I try the command:

latex document.tex

..., I get the error:

-bash: latex: command not found

I've done some research, and it seems that it's not sourcing my path right or something, because again I think I have all the proper commands in the /usr/texbin directory. However, I'm pretty new to this, and while I've changed some path variables successfully in the past, I'm often unable to replicate that success.

So far, I've added '/usr/texbin' to /etc/paths, and I've added the file 'TeX' with the one line of '/usr/texbin' to /etc/paths.d, but neither of these things did anything.

I would like to get the 'latex' command to work right, but if possible I would like to understand where the commands are coming from, where I should go each time to check the path variables, etc., so that I have some understanding of what's going on. (I'd be happy to problem fixed, but happier if I could learn something in the process.)

Thanks in advance!

 

[jiminaus]

I've not used the /etc/paths file or the /etc/paths.d directory under Mac OS X. I didn't know they existed.

Under Mac OS X I've just created a .bash_profile file under my home directory with something like this.

export PATH=/usr/texbin:$PATH

 

[gravity black]

That did very well, thank you.

 

[Sander]

NB: You may need to set some paths for LaTeX itself as well, so it can find all its .cls files, format files etc.