From: Johan Holmberg <holmberg@...>
Date: 2001-12-08T20:46:25+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27918] "load" without looking in $LOAD_PATH ?


Hi !

I have an application written in Ruby that needs to read one or
more "data/configuration files". I want these files to also be
ruby-code, so I'm looking for the "right" way to read these files.

At first sight "Kernel#load" seems like the natural choice for this.
But Kernet#load doesn't work the way I want. The call

    load "foo.rb"

tries to find the file "foo.rb" somewhere in the path specified by
$LOAD_PATH. So if a file with the same name exists "by accident"
somewhere in the library path, ruby will never look in my local
directory (where the file I want to read usually is located).

But couldn't I change $LOAD_PATH, and set it to just "." before
calling "load" ???

I guess that would be OK if the loaded "data file" didn't use
"require" or "load" by itself. But I want it to be possible for
the "data file" to contain arbitrary ruby-code, so this is not
really a solution for mee.

I have also considered makeing the filename argument "absolute"
before passing it to "load". The best way I have found until now is
to call "load" like this:

    load File.expand_path($filename)

As far as I can see this effectively disables the path-searching
normally done by "load". Is this the right way to do this ???
Or have I missed some better way ???

I'm a little surprised that Ruby doesn't have a function
"load_without_looking_in_LOAD_PATH" (but with a better name), ie. a
function that finds the file just like an ordinary File#open call
does.

Then the current "load" function could be a thin wrapper over that
function, just adding the searching of LOAD_PATH.

Regards,

Johan Holmberg