[texhax] inconsistency between pdftex and tex

[Philip TAYLOR [PC87S-O/XP]]

David Cantor wrote:
> 
> I just found a minor inconsistency which probably should be fixed at
> some time in the future.  I am using the TeX live distribution,
> version 7 on a linux system running redhat 7.3.
> 
> I have a latex file whose first line is "%&latex".  If I run this with
> tex it reads the latex format file.  If I run it with pdftex it
> doesn't and I have to use pdflatex.

PdfTeX is behaving correctly; a TeX implementation has
no business interpreting a comment as a pragmat.  I suggest
you complain to author of your "TeX" implementation, since
what has been supplied as "TeX" clearly doesn't meet Knuth's
requirements for a program of that name.

Philip Taylor