Differences

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--- kpsewhich [May 17, 2026 at 15:17] – created Ivan Janevski
+++ kpsewhich [May 17, 2026 at 15:33] (current) – Ivan Janevski
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 # kpsewhich
-**kpsewhich** is a command
+**kpsewhich** is a LaTeX-related command. It's a diagnostic command that's used to look up the full path of a file you know the LaTeX compiler would use implicitly. In some way, it is similar to the `which` command, which shows the full path of a command if you would run it in the shell (e.g. `which ls` shows `/usr/bin/ls`).
+For example, when you use `\documentclass{article}` in a TeX document, and you compile the document with `pdflatex`, the compiler is going to load the "document class: article" from `article.cls` file (Note: the `.cls` extension stands for "class")
+```latex
+% Compile: pdflatex main.tex
+% Result:  main.pdf
+\documentclass{article}
+\begin{document}
+...
+\end{document}
+```
-## Help
+Where `article.cls` located? You can find out with `kpsewhich` command!
-Running `kpsewhich --help`
+```
+ $ kpsewhich article.cls
+/usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
+```
+## Run
+### No arguments
+You can't run it without arguments.
+```
+ $ kpsewhich
+Missing argument. Try `kpsewhich --help' for more information.
+```
+### Non-existent file
+If you put something nonsensical it's just going to return nothing.
+```
+ $ kpsewhich fdsafdsafdsa
+```
+### Help
 ```
+ $ kpsewhich --help
 Usage: kpsewhich [OPTION]... [FILENAME]...