From: Clemens Hintze <c.hintze@...>
Date: 2000-03-24T15:14:44+01:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:02129] Question the sequence in $:

Hi,

I have found the following:

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.5.3 (2000-03-15) [i586-linux] 

$ ruby -e '$:.each{|p| p p}'
"/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.5/i586-linux"
"/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.5"
"/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby"
"/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.5/i586-linux"
"/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.5"
"."  

As you can see the local directory "." is at the end of the load
path. That means, that my current directory is the last one to be
searched for libs.

Is this intended?

I would mean the "." should be the *first* entry within the load
path. My local libs should overwrite site and system ones! If not, I
could not e.g. copy a system lib and patch it.

I think everywhere the sequence should be: 

   local -> site -> system

Other opinions?

And while thinking about this, I have another proposal. How about to
include the directory from where the program was started into the load
path too? That would enable me to put my application with its support
libs into an own subdirectory and after starting, the load path would
already contain this directory too! So its support libs could easily
be required too. But this should only happen, of course, if $0 is not
'-' or '-e'.

Only, I am not sure about the sequence. Should such an application
directory comes before or after "."? Ah ... before I forget, platform
dependend directories within application dir should also be
considered.

\cle

-- 
Clemens Hintze  mailto: c.hintze@gmx.net