Displaying memory variable values

Question

TeX uses a variety of files to set the maximum memory of various items, e.g. "pool size". Is there a command which will print the values of all of these variables?

Answer 1

This is "distribution dependent"; Web2C based distributions such as TeX Live or MiKTeX use one or more texmf.cnf file to set memory parameters at run time. With these distributions, the command line

kpsewhich -a texmf.cnf

will show the location of the loaded files, where one can look at the settings. However, just saying in your TeX file

\tracingstats=1

(which LaTeX does anyway) will result in TeX printing something like

Here is how much of TeX's memory you used:
 1 string out of 497974
 10 string characters out of 3220722
 5898 words of memory out of 3000000
 926 multiletter control sequences out of 15000+200000
 14794 words of font info for 50 fonts, out of 3000000 for 9000
 14 hyphenation exceptions out of 8191
 1i,0n,0p,17b,6s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s

at the end of the .log file, where the memory parameters are quite clearly recognizable; pdfTeX will add other pieces of information such as

PDF statistics:
 0 PDF objects out of 1000 (max. 8388607)
 0 named destinations out of 1000 (max. 500000)
 1 words of extra memory for PDF output out of 10000 (max. 10000000)

(Yes, the sample file didn't use much memory.)

XeTeX will print similarly to Knuth TeX, while LuaTeX will print something slightly different:

Here is how much of LuaTeX's memory you used:
 3 strings out of 496569
 100000,35830 words of node,token memory allocated 161 words of node memory still in use:
   2 hlist, 1 rule, 1 glyph, 18 glue_spec nodes
   avail lists: 2:4,3:1,4:1,6:3
 2000 multiletter control sequences out of 65536+200000
 50 fonts using 1466661 bytes
 1i,0n,0p,16b,6s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s
No pages of output.

PDF statistics: 0 PDF objects out of 1000 (max. 8388607)
 0 named destinations out of 1000 (max. 131072)
 1 words of extra memory for PDF output out of 10000 (max. 10000000)