Re: PATH: autoload with explicit path

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Dec 11, 10:18pm, Peter Stephenson wrote:
}
} I wanted to autoload a function from an explicit path.
} [...] it strikes me it's a bit mean of the shell not simply to do
} something sensible with
} 
} autoload +X /path/to/myfunc

For +X only, this can be accomplished by

    FPATH=/path/to autoload +X myfunc

Sebastian's plugin manager uses this.

} That doesn't do anything sensible at the moment --- relative paths to
} functions do, with the full relative path as the name, which is entirely
} consistent, but absolute paths don't and in fact it tries the name as a
} relative path anyway which seems Just Plain Wrong.

If I understand what you're saying, that means

    autoload this/here/file

creates a function named "this/here/file" by loading "file" from
$^fpath/this/here  ... yes?

And then (before this patch)

    autoload /this/here/file

creates a function named "/this/here/file" from the same location?

So after this patch there is no way to autoload a function whose name
begins with a slash.  Not that it was especially useful to be able to
do so, just confirming.

} autoload -Uz /path/to/myfunc
} 
} defines myfunc to be found in the directory /path/to by reusing the
} filename element of the shfunc structure that's currently unused at this
} stage.
} 
} This seemed quite a useful feature.

Yes, this is specifically what Sebastian and (I think) Ray were asking
for several months ago.

If I may make a suggestion -- an equally useful variation would be for
autoload to search the $fpath at the time of the autoload command and
store the path where the file is found *iff* it is found.  This would
be sort of like doing

    autoload -Uz $^fpath/myfunc(N)

except that it handles the situation where $fpath does not yet contain
the "myfunc" file.

Another useful variation might be to fall back to the current fpath if
the function isn't found at the specified location.