Multi-file documents

Real LaTeX projects are rarely a single file. A root main.tex typically assembles the document from chapters, sections, and appendices via \input and \include. Pass -r (or --recursive) and clat formats the whole tree from the root down:

clat -r main.tex

This works with --check too, to dry-run an entire document:

clat --check -r main.tex

What clat follows

Recursive mode discovers .tex files referenced by any of these commands:

Command form	Example
\input{...}	\input{chapters/intro}
\input ... (no braces)	\input chapters/intro
\include{...}	\include{chapters/method}
\subfile{...}	\subfile{appendix/app.tex}
\import{dir}{file}	\import{sections/}{method}
\subimport{dir}{file}	\subimport{sections/}{method}
\includefrom{dir}{file}	\includefrom{parts/}{one}
\subincludefrom{dir}{file}	\subincludefrom{parts/}{one}

Starred variants (e.g. \include*) are recognised as well.

How paths are resolved

• Relative to the referencing file. A path is resolved relative to the directory of the file that contains the command — so \input{../shared/defs} inside chapters/intro.tex resolves against chapters/. For the \import-family commands, the first {dir} argument is applied first.
• .tex is assumed. If no extension is given, .tex is appended (\input{chapters/intro} → chapters/intro.tex).
• Only .tex is followed. References to .sty, .bib, images, or other non-source files are ignored — clat only formats LaTeX source.
• Comments are respected. A commented-out line such as % \input{old-draft} is skipped. An escaped percent (\%) does not start a comment.

Traversal order and duplicates

• Roots you pass on the command line are visited in order.
• Dependencies are followed depth-first, in the order they appear in each file.
• Each file is formatted once — duplicates (including cycles, where two files \input each other) are de-duplicated, so clat never loops or double-formats.

For example, given:

% main.tex
\input{chapters/intro}
\include{chapters/method}
\subfile{appendix/app.tex}

clat -r main.tex formats main.tex, then chapters/intro.tex (and anything it inputs), then chapters/method.tex, then appendix/app.tex.

Missing files

If a referenced .tex file doesn't exist, clat keeps it in the work list and reports it through the normal formatter output as a missing file, rather than failing silently — so a typo'd \input path is surfaced, not swallowed.

Restrictions

-r cannot be combined with -o/--output: recursive mode rewrites each discovered file in place (or, with --check, rewrites nothing), so there is no single output file to redirect to.

Discovering files programmatically

The same traversal is available from Python as clat.cli.discover_tex_files, which returns the ordered, de-duplicated list of files clat would format.