Re: PATCH: wordcode files

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 1, 11:06am, Sven Wischnowsky wrote:
} Subject: PATCH: wordcode files
}
} The zcompile builtin can be used to create wordcode files. [...] If
} neither -r nor -m are given zcompile decides if the file is to be read
} or mapped: if the resulting file (one version of the content, see
} below) is less than 4096 bytes long it is read. [...]
} 
} The file created contains two versions: one for either endian-ness.
} The shell reading the file will decide which one it needs [...]
} 
} Wordcode files can be used in two ways. One way is to put them into
} the directories in $fpath with the .zwc extension. [...] The other way
} is to put the name of the wordcode file into $fpath. In that case the
} .zwc extension isn't required [...]

This all sounds fine, although I lean towards requiring that the .zwc
extension appear in the $fpath listing.  What happens, for example, if
I have both a ~/zshfun/ and ~/zshfun.zwc and I list ~/zshfun in $fpath?

} [...] Note also, that such digest files are really only searched when
} they appear as elements of $fpath. The shell does not look into every
} *.zwc file in every diretory in $fpath [...]

This is just fine.

} [...] I also find it tempting to turn most of my .z* files (including
} the completion dump file) into functions and putting them into a
} wordcode file, but I haven't implemented any support for that either.
} Maybe we could extend the mechanism with the *.zwc files to also apply
} to sourced files -- creating dump files for them is simple, and can be
} done already with zcompile, it's just that the function for sourcing a
} file does not check if there is a *.zwc file. Should we?

What would "source" do if it encountered a function digest file?  Simply
define all the functions it contains?

Perhaps we'd need yet another option to zcompile, to tell it to produce
a source-able file instead of a function digest.  Then "source" ignores
the digest files and autoloading ignores source-able files.  Unless we
think it'd be useful to have autoloading simply execute the source-able
files, but I think that'd have to be limited to the file-in-a-directory
case and not the file-named-in-$fpath case.

}   % zcompile foo ../Completion/*/_*~*~
}   % fpath=(foo)
} 
} And then do completion (without having it done before in the same
} shell)... the first completions (where normally the functions are
} loaded and parsed) should be a lot faster, especially when using the
} larger functions like _cvs, _rpm or _pbm.

So _cvs is still a function that defines a bunch of other functions
and then calls itself?  When such a function is loaded from a mapped
digest file, the result of executing it is going to be a bunch of
functions that have been copied into allocated memory, right?

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com