Re: Very basic questions.

[Colin S. Miller]

> In runtime, how does "require" know where the feature list is? There is only 
> machine code then.
John,

(require 'feature)
searches the paths listed in 'load-path',
this can be added to using (add-path).
It looks for a file called "feature.el" or "feature.elc".


Emacs packages can either be in source-code,
which have an extension '.el', or be pre-compiled,
where they have the extension '.elc'.

Pre-compiled packages run faster than packages dynamically
compiled from source.

The pre-compiled emacs tends to come with its packages pre-compiled
as well, there will be sources for the packages where you got
emacs from.

HTH,
Coin S. Miller

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