[Bug 327846] [NEW] does not use input output directory properly

[themusicgod1]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: latex2rtf

latex2rtf seems to allow, via -o commandline argument set, to specify
the location of an output file.  However the directory, at least for '.'
is not listened to, even if given.  The result is stored in the right
filename, but in the home directory instead of the directory specified.
This is at least the case when the input file is in the home directory,
and the program is run from another directory.

example:

jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ ls ~/*.tex
/home/jcliff/something.tex
jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ latex2rtf -o ./out.rtf ~/something.tex 
jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ ls *.rtf
ls: cannot access *.rtf: No such file or directory
jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ ls ~/*.rtf
/home/jcliff/out.rtf  /home/jcliff/something.rtf

what should happen

jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ ls ~/*.tex
/home/jcliff/something.tex
jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ latex2rtf -o ./out.rtf ~/something.tex 
jcliff at CDD4:~/mirror/www.spiritsd.ca/test$ ls *.rtf
out.rtf

Looking through the code it looks like it does something strange with slashes in teh filename itself.
(gdb) next
0x1e3d120 "/home/jcliff/./out.rtf

specifically, at main.c at lines 743-747 seems to be the issue:

<code>
        if (g_home_dir)
            name = strdup_together(g_home_dir, filename);
        else
            name = strdup(filename);
</code>

Where 'name' is the output file name, to be opened with fopen on the
next line.  The 'else' condition is what I would consider the desirable
one, and seems to do what it needs to; opens the file at that location,
not at some location that was not specified(file name under the home
directory).  I tested the 'else' condition and it does output to the
correct directory.

So what I see is that there are two options here.   One, the default, somewhat confusing behaviour can be kept, and there's probably a way to force the 'else' condition to occur.  
On the other hand, there could be an option to force the odd behaviour, and have the default behaviour be that when -o is specified the next argument is what is, in fact, opened as the output file, bounded by whatever fopen can handle(which looks like quite a bit).

'dir' doesn't occur in /usr/share/latex2rtf/cfg, so it doesn't look like
there's a configuration option to set either as default behaviour

edit: missed a crucial word.

** Affects: latex2rtf (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
does not use input output directory properly
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/327846
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