Load file and return evaluation result (instead of t)?

[Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com>]

Hi List, 

the manual says

 ,----------------------------------------------
 | load returns t if the file loads successfully
 `----------------------------------------------

but I would rather like to write a (big) Elisp expression into a file,
load the file, and get the expression's return value instead of just
't'. 

Something like 

,------------------------------
| (eval-buffer (find-file ...))
`------------------------------

does not do the job either. 

Did I overlook the simple and canonical way to do this? 
This is mainly to avoid that shell commands like 

,-------------------------------------------------------------
| $ emacsclient -s my-server -e "( ... elisp expressions ...)"
`-------------------------------------------------------------

become too long, and thus replace them with something like:

,-------------------------------------------------------------
| $ emacsclient -s my-server -e "(load-file \"/my/file.el\")"
`-------------------------------------------------------------

where /my/file.el contains those elisp expressions.

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten