Teplate parial fallback to data dir doesn't work with absolute path to template

[aDotInTheVoid]

Version: pandoc-nightly-macos-2021-02-04

In directory /tmp/pandoc_bug

File README.md

text

File: template.html

<style>
$styles.html()$
</style>

$body$

Running ./pandoc README.md --template template.html gives the expected output (see below).

However /pandoc README.md --template /tmp/pandoc_bug/template.html gives this error

pandoc: /tmp/pandoc_bug/styles.html: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

While this is true, it should fall back to finding styles.html in the templates subdirectory of the user data directory. Indeed this is what happens in the case of the first example

Expected output

<style>
html {
  line-height: 1.5;
  font-family: Georgia, serif;
  font-size: 20px;
  color: #1a1a1a;
  background-color: #fdfdfd;
}
body {
  margin: 0 auto;
  max-width: 36em;
  padding-left: 50px;
  padding-right: 50px;
  padding-top: 50px;
  padding-bottom: 50px;
  hyphens: auto;
  word-wrap: break-word;
  text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
  font-kerning: normal;
}
@media (max-width: 600px) {
  body {
    font-size: 0.9em;
    padding: 1em;
  }
}
@media print {
  body {
    background-color: transparent;
    color: black;
    font-size: 12pt;
  }
  p, h2, h3 {
    orphans: 3;
    widows: 3;
  }
  h2, h3, h4 {
    page-break-after: avoid;
  }
}
p {
  margin: 1em 0;
}
a {
  color: #1a1a1a;
}
a:visited {
  color: #1a1a1a;
}
img {
  max-width: 100%;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  margin-top: 1.4em;
}
h5, h6 {
  font-size: 1em;
  font-style: italic;
}
h6 {
  font-weight: normal;
}
ol, ul {
  padding-left: 1.7em;
  margin-top: 1em;
}
li > ol, li > ul {
  margin-top: 0;
}
blockquote {
  margin: 1em 0 1em 1.7em;
  padding-left: 1em;
  border-left: 2px solid #e6e6e6;
  color: #606060;
}
code {
  font-family: Menlo, Monaco, 'Lucida Console', Consolas, monospace;
  font-size: 85%;
  margin: 0;
}
pre {
  margin: 1em 0;
  overflow: auto;
}
pre code {
  padding: 0;
  overflow: visible;
}
.sourceCode {
 background-color: transparent;
 overflow: visible;
}
hr {
  background-color: #1a1a1a;
  border: none;
  height: 1px;
  margin: 1em 0;
}
table {
  margin: 1em 0;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  width: 100%;
  overflow-x: auto;
  display: block;
  font-variant-numeric: lining-nums tabular-nums;
}
table caption {
  margin-bottom: 0.75em;
}
tbody {
  margin-top: 0.5em;
  border-top: 1px solid #1a1a1a;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #1a1a1a;
}
th {
  border-top: 1px solid #1a1a1a;
  padding: 0.25em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em;
}
td {
  padding: 0.125em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em;
}
header {
  margin-bottom: 4em;
  text-align: center;
}
#TOC li {
  list-style: none;
}
#TOC a:not(:hover) {
  text-decoration: none;
}
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;}
ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
.display.math{display: block; text-align: center; margin: 0.5rem auto;}
</style>

<p>text</p>

[jgm]

It never falls back if you specify an absolute path, by design. The thought is that if you specify an absolute path, you really want to use the file that is there.