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(kpathsea.info)Path expansion

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Path expansion
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  Kpathsea recognizes certain special characters and constructions in
search paths, similar to that in shells.  As a general example:
`~$USER/{foo,bar}//baz' expands to all subdirectories under directories
`foo' and `bar' in $USER's home directory that contain a directory or
file `baz'.  These expansions are explained in the sections below.

Default expansion

a: or :a or a::b expands to a default.

Variable expansion

$foo and ${foo} expand to environment values.

Tilde expansion

~ and ~user expand to home directories.

Brace expansion

a{foo,bar}b expands to afoob abarb.

KPSE_DOT expansion

is replaced with $KPSE_DOT if it is defined.

Subdirectory expansion

a// and a//b recursively expand to subdirs.