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I think that part of the problem is that guile has a "fixed" notion of
path serching. When you call upon %search-path, all searching are
performed through low-level C functions which you cannot control.
This was a problem for me working with an embedded system where the
filesystem just isn´t up to the usual UNIX standards. I have thus
devised a path that allows the guts of the search mechanism to be
replaced.
With this path, all searching are channeled through one function,
`search-path´, which you may redefine. By redefining load to accept
both a string or a port, I could easily implement something that will
accept tar files in the load path and load files out of these as well
as if the files in question had been found directly.
The patch was sent to bug-guile, but there was never any feedback. I
can dig it up if anybody wants to see it.
In fact I have been dreaming about reorganizing guile such that we had
a core which had no concept of files or I/O or anything. There would
only be a generic notion of ports, such that load would accept ports
and work directly with that without caring about how it had come to
be.
Creation of ports would then be the domain of additional libraries,
such as a posix library or a stdio library that would provide
functions such as `open-input-file´. Compability with RnRS would be
provided by translation functions. If `load´ was given anything other
than a port, it would call a specific function, lets call it
`pathname->port´, that would do the translation. The posix library
would then provide a hook for pathname->port that would know how to
convert a string to a port by opening the file designated by the
string.
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Christian Lynbech | Telebit Communications A/S
Fax: +45 8628 8186 | Fabrik 11, DK-8260 Viby J
Phone: +45 8628 8177 + 28 | email: chl@tbit.dk --- URL: http://www.telebit.dk
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Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
- petonic@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)