[Fink-beginners] system-tetex update problem/(pseudo)solution

[Edward Thome]

Hi.

I just updated my system-tetex (running the most current fink, OS 10.2.8,using tsch). Immediately upon opening an xterm/Terminal window, I got the error
Bad : modifier in $ (/).
and my ~/.cshrc file failed to load. I discovered that the culprit was the line "source /sw/bin/init.csh" and upon commenting out various segments of that file one-by-one, I found that the error occurred when the file
/sw/etc/profile.d/system-tetex.csh
was being loaded. Upon commenting out lines there, I discovered that the problem in this file was the line
setenv MANPATH $MANPATH:/usr/local/teTeX/man
After doing some experimenting, I found that the problem seemed to be the ":/". If I left off either the colon or the slash, I did not get the error, but MANPATH was not set correctly. So, on a whim, I typed in
setenv MANPATH $MANPATH\:/usr/local/teTeX/man
instead. Not only did I not get the error, but 'echo $MANPATH' revealed that the MANPATH was written appropriately, and appropriately according to what the command was supposed to do.

Is this a tsch error, something strange about my computer, or ...? I've duplicated the problem and the solution on two computers now, my office and my home computer.

Regards,
Ed