Thank you for the example. You are right, gnus-start.el is using
locate-library to check existence of its init files and uses load to search
for them again right after. Given how that code is written, we probably
should keep locate-library as is since at least some people people are
relying on its ability to locate arbitrary files that are not libraries.


On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:

> Alex Kosorukoff wrote:
>
> > I think these file names are more appropriate for data files, not
> > executable ones. It is undesirable that a name "tramp.gz" will shadow a
> > valid library file "tramp.elc" that won't be found as a result. When you
> > say those names aren't spurious, do you have a particular  example of an
> > emacs elisp library in mind which file name ends with a suffix other than
> > .el .elc .el.gz .elc.gz? I think the main difference is that I assume
> that
> > this list is exhaustive and you imply that it is not. You can prove me
> > wrong by a single example.
>
> I've somewhat lost track of exactly what you want an example of, but:
>
>        When Gnus starts, it will read the `gnus-site-init-file'
>     (`.../site-lisp/gnus-init' by default) and `gnus-init-file' (`~/.gnus'
>     by default) files.  These are normal Emacs Lisp files and can be used
>     to avoid cluttering your `~/.emacs' and `site-init' files with Gnus
>     stuff.  Gnus will also check for files with the same names as these,
>     but with `.elc' and `.el' suffixes.  In other words, if you have set
>     `gnus-init-file' to `~/.gnus', it will look for `~/.gnus.elc',
>     `~/.gnus.el', and finally `~/.gnus' (in this order).
>
> and it uses locate-library to do that.
>