Re: Don't concat directories to file names

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 6/15/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <address@hidden> wrote:

> The trick of doing
>
> (defun user-init-directory ()
>   "Return the per-user directory holding Emacs configuration files."
>   (if (and (boundp 'user-init-directory)
>            (file-directory-p user-init-directory))
>       user-init-directory
>     (find-user-init-directory)))  ; this may be oversimplified

Yes, but that adds API complexity.

> Looks reasonable to me.  FWIW, existing XEmacs practice is to
> encourage use of `user-init-directory' by looking there first (for our
> startup files; we don't have the API you are proposing yet, so other
> libraries have to code by hand).

Yes, I looked at XEmacs' startup.el. But locating the startup files is
another issue; I'm interested in helping the libraries, not X?Emacs.

> I'm at my limit here: I can imagine use cases for all this
> flexibility, but I've never encountered them in the wild.

Agreed. Most of the API complexity of XEmacs (in this regard, I mean)
is for internal use, I think, so as you say below, compatibility is
not an issue IMO.

> I'd like to claim priority for `user-init-directory': it's
> over ten years old in XEmacs.

Of course!

> I'm not a big fan of the name "user-emacs-file" for
> the function you've defined

Neither do I; it was just to get going.

> How
> does "user-configuration-file" or "find-user-configuration-file"
> sound?  (Of course "configuration" could be shortened to "config".)

Good, I like `user-config-file' or `find-user-config-file'. Stefan has
proposed `user-init-file', but I don't like it because it seems
related to .emacs/init.el (as the variable of the same name is).

            Juanma