Re: Is (provide 'foo) at the start good or bad?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Alan Mackenzie writes:

 > Putting `provide' at the end of the file means you've actually loaded
 > the file when the provision is done.  Thus if the load crashes (very
 > common when you're developing), you don't have a spurious provided
 > symbol.

Dunno about your Emacs, but my Emacs undoes the `provide' if `require'
does not complete successfully (assuming that Emacs itself is still
alive, of course :-).

This doesn't work for a plain `load', but I'm not sure I care, since
I rarely use a plain load in a program, and if a `load' crashes
interactively, presumably I intend to fix it immediately.

YMMV.