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32.8 Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs
Lisp code for Emacs editing commands is stored in files whose names conventionally end in ‘.el’. This ending tells Emacs to edit them in Emacs-Lisp mode (see section Executing Lisp Expressions).
Emacs Lisp code can be compiled into byte-code, which loads faster, takes up less space, and executes faster. See (elisp)Byte Compilation section `Byte Compilation' in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. By convention, the compiled code for a library goes in a separate file whose name ends in ‘.elc’. Thus, the compiled code for ‘foo.el’ goes in ‘foo.elc’.
To execute a file of Emacs Lisp code, use M-x load-file. This command reads a file name using the minibuffer and then executes the contents of that file as Lisp code. It is not necessary to visit the file first; in any case, this command reads the file as found on disk, not text in an Emacs buffer.
Once a file of Lisp code is installed in the Emacs Lisp library
directories, users can load it using M-x load-library. Programs
can load it by calling load
, a more primitive function that is
similar but accepts some additional arguments.
M-x load-library differs from M-x load-file in that it searches a sequence of directories and tries three file names in each directory. Suppose your argument is lib; the three names are ‘lib.elc’, ‘lib.el’, and lastly just ‘lib’. If ‘lib.elc’ exists, it is by convention the result of compiling ‘lib.el’; it is better to load the compiled file, since it will load and run faster.
If load-library
finds that ‘lib.el’ is newer than
‘lib.elc’ file, it issues a warning, because it's likely
that somebody made changes to the ‘.el’ file and forgot to
recompile it. Nonetheless, it loads ‘lib.elc’. This is
because people often leave unfinished edits the source file, and don't
recompile it until they think it is ready to use.
Because the argument to load-library
is usually not in itself
a valid file name, file name completion is not available. Indeed, when
using this command, you usually do not know exactly what file name
will be used.
The sequence of directories searched by M-x load-library is
specified by the variable load-path
, a list of strings that are
directory names. The default value of the list contains the directories where
the Lisp code for Emacs itself is stored. If you have libraries of
your own, put them in a single directory and add that directory
to load-path
. nil
in this list stands for the current default
directory, but it is probably not a good idea to put nil
in the
list. If you find yourself wishing that nil
were in the list,
most likely what you really want to do is use M-x load-file
this once.
Often you do not have to give any command to load a library, because
the commands defined in the library are set up to autoload that
library. Trying to run any of those commands calls load
to load
the library; this replaces the autoload definitions with the real ones
from the library.
By default, Emacs refuses to load compiled Lisp files which were
compiled with XEmacs, a modified versions of Emacs—they can cause
Emacs to crash. Set the variable load-dangerous-libraries
to
t
if you want to try loading them.
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