How to use “input” on Linux (Fedora 16)? [closed]

Question

This seems like a trivial thing, but I can't figure out how to use input properly on Fedora. When I used Windows 7, I would put the following into my document

\input{D:/Dropbox/Code_Library/LaTeX/custom_headings_1.tex}

The file is now located at /home/[user_name]/Home/Dropbox/Code_Library/LaTeX/custom_headings_1.tex

But when I try to use input{/home/[user_name]/Home/Dropbox/Code_Library/LaTeX/custom_headings_1.tex} I get a "file not found" error.

In retrospect, since I still use Windows regularly, doing this is probably not a good idea because I won't be able to compile documents on both platforms. Can any one suggest a better file inclusion system than putting a "custom_headings_1.tex" file in every new document's folder?

Answer 1

Using the same file on Windows and on a Unix system can be accomplished by the following code

\usepackage{ifplatform}
\ifwindows
  \newcommand{\dropboxprefix}{D:/Dropbox/Code_Library/LaTeX}
\else
  \newcommand{\dropboxprefix}{/home/[user_name]/Home/Dropbox/Code_Library/LaTeX}
\fi

and then

\input{\dropboxprefix/customheadings_1.tex}

should work on both systems.

About TeX not finding the file on the GNU/Linux platform only guesses can be cast: what does the shell command

kpsewhich /home/[user_name]/Home/Dropbox/Code_Library/LaTeX/custom_headings_1.tex

answer?

Of course in all this [user_name] should be replaced by the actual user name.