Handling of spaces and apostrophes in path

[danyalsaqib]

Description

I was setting up vimtex with neovim on my linux machine, when I noticed something peculiar. Generally when compiling a tex file, the PDF viewer would open automatically (I was using Zathura). However, when compiling a tex file with a path containing spaces and apostrophes, the PDF viewer would not open automatically despite successful compilation. When I opened the PDF file through Zathura separately, it was compiled correctly and was updating after compilation. The actual path looked something like:

/home/user/Documents/University/Master's Thesis/thesis.tex

After compilation, I checked vimtex info for cmd_start, and the output was as follows:

cmd_start: zathura  -x "/usr/bin/nvim --headless -c \"VimtexInverseSearch %{line}:%{column} '%{input}'\"" --synctex-forward 1:1:'/home/user/Documents/University/Master'\\''s Thesis/thesis.tex' 'thesis.pdf'&

It's possible that the space or the apostrophe results in a broken command, since the very same tex file compiled successfully and opened the PDF viewer automatically when its path did not have a space or apostrophe.

While I understand it is generally considered bad practice to have spaces and special characters in paths and that catering to these cases might be outside of the project's scope, I thought I'd document this problem all the same since it took me a bit to understand what was going on.

Steps to reproduce

1. Place any tex file in a path containing a space and/or apostrophe.
2. Open tex file in vim/neovim and compile.

Expected behavior

Compile successfully and automatically open PDF viewer.

Actual behavior

Compiles successfully, but PDF viewer does not open automatically. Compiled PDF seems to be updated and correct when opened externally.

Do you use a latexmkrc file?

No

VimtexInfo

cmd_start: zathura  -x "/usr/bin/nvim --headless -c \"VimtexInverseSearch %{line}:%{column} '%{input}'\"" --synctex-forward 1:1:'/home/user/Documents/University/Master'\\''s Thesis/thesis.tex' 'thesis.pdf'&

[lervag]

Could you please provide the following:

1. The full output of :VimtexInfo (I'm curious, why did you remove everything except cmd_start?).
2. Your VimTeX configuration.

[danyalsaqib]

Sorry, here's the complete output of :VimtexInfo:

System info:
  OS: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
  LaTeX version: pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.25 (TeX Live 2023/Debian)
  Vim version: NVIM v0.12.0-dev
  Has clientserver: true
  Servername: /run/user/1000/nvim.22632.0
  $PATH:
    - /bin
    - /home/danyal/.local/share/nvim/mason/bin
    - /sbin
    - /snap/bin
    - /usr/bin
    - /usr/games
    - /usr/local/bin
    - /usr/local/games
    - /usr/local/sbin
    - /usr/sbin

VimTeX project: thesis
  base: thesis.tex
  root: /home/danyal/Documents/University/Master's Thesis
  tex: /home/danyal/Documents/University/Master's Thesis/thesis.tex
  main parser: current file verified
  document class: university.cls
  packages: algorithm algorithmicx algpseudocode amsbsy amsfonts amsgen amsmath amsopn amssymb amstext amsthm atbegshi atbegshi-ltx atveryend atveryend-ltx auxhook bigintcalc bitset blindtext calc caption caption3 color comment elocalloc enumerate environ epstopdf-base etoolbox expl3 float forest forest-lib-edges geometry gettitlestring graphics graphicx hycolor hyperref iftex ifthen ifvtex inconsolata infwarerr inlinedef inputenc intcalc keyval kvdefinekeys kvoptions kvsetkeys l3keys2e listings listingsutf8 lstlang1 lstmisc ltxcmds mathtools mhsetup nameref nccmath pdfcol pdfescape pdftexcmds pgf pgfcomp-version-0-65 pgfcomp-version-1-18 pgfcore pgffor pgfkeys pgfmath pgfopts pgfrcs pgfsys refcount rerunfilecheck setspace stringenc tcolorbox textcomp tikz tikzfill-common tikzfill.image trig trimspaces uniquecounter upquote url verbatim wrapfig xcolor xkcdcolors xkeyval xparse xspace
  compiler: latexmk
    engine: -pdf
    options:
      -verbose
      -file-line-error
      -synctex=1
      -interaction=nonstopmode
    callback: 1
    continuous: 1
    executable: latexmk
    job: 
      jobid: 12
      output: /tmp/nvim.danyal/DuHkGI/0
      cmd: max_print_line=2000 latexmk -verbose -file-line-error -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode  -pdf -pvc -pvctimeout- -view=none -e '$compiling_cmd = ($compiling_cmd ? $compiling_cmd . " ; " : "") . "echo vimtex_compiler_callback_compiling"' -e '$success_cmd = ($success_cmd ? $success_cmd . " ; " : "") . "echo vimtex_compiler_callback_success"' -e '$failure_cmd = ($failure_cmd ? $failure_cmd . " ; " : "") . "echo vimtex_compiler_callback_failure"' 'thesis.tex'
      pid: 23566
  viewer: Zathura
    xwin id: 0
    cmd_start: zathura  -x "/usr/bin/nvim --headless -c \"VimtexInverseSearch %{line}:%{column} '%{input}'\"" --synctex-forward 31:27:'/home/danyal/Documents/University/Master'\\''s Thesis/thesis.tex' 'thesis.pdf'&
  qf method: LaTeX logfile

My VimTex is configured using a lua plugin as follows:

return {
	{
		"lervag/vimtex",
		lazy = false, -- we don't want to lazy load VimTeX
		-- tag = "v2.15", -- uncomment to pin to a specific release
		init = function()
			-- VimTeX configuration goes here, e.g.
			vim.g.vimtex_view_method = "zathura"
		end
	}
}

[lervag]

I don't think the space is a problem. Only the apostrophe. I'm looking into if that is something I can fix.

[lervag]

It turns out that the problem is caused by the change in #849.

[lervag]

I think this is fixed now.