Re: is the ls-lisp package switched on or off?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "leo" <halloleo@noospaam.myrealbox.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 15:01:36 +1100
> 
> how can i (inside emacs) find out wether the ls-lisp package is in use or
> not?

Every ELisp package has a line near its end saying this:

  (provide 'package-name)

This is so you could make a test of whether the package has been
loaded into Emacs, like this:

  (featurep 'package-name)

This expression returns t if the package was loaded, nil otherwise.

So in your case,

  (featurep 'ls-lisp)

will supply the answer.

> i just found out  the hard way, hid the excuteable and dired was still able
> to produce a directory.
> 
> so i guess it uses ls-lisp (or did it uses ls-lisp only beacuse it couln't
> find the ls command?)

I'm guessing that you are running on Windows.  Emacs on Windows uses
ls-lisp by default, since most Windows machines don't have an external
`ls' command.

> but is there a switch or so in emacs?

If you want to turn off the Lisp emulation of `ls', customize the
value of the variable `ls-lisp-use-insert-directory-program': if set
to non-nil, it will cause Emacs to use the external `ls'.  (However, I
don't recommend to do that if your `ls' is a Cygwin program, since
Cygwin programs have compatibility issues with Emacs.)