problem with kpsewhich on 2023 binary from 20240218

[Karl Berry]

Hi Ken,

            export TEXMFCNF=/opt/texlive/20*/texmf-dist/web2c

There is no glob expansion in such assignments, hence the literal *.
Try the same sort of ls -d you did above (or echo, or whatever).

The *shell* will glob the result of $TEXMFCNF, hence you see
/opt/texlive/2023/texmf-dist/web2c from the cmdline (I imagine).
kpsewhich is not a shell :).

If you quote the variable expansion, you'll see:

$ x=*
$ echo "$x"
*
$ echo $x
bin dead.letter mail ... etc.