Re: autoload and auto-compression-mode

[Roland Winkler]

On Sun Jan 15 2006 Richard M. Stallman wrote:
>     Why does autoload use `must-suffix'?  No clue.  Anyone?
> 
> ISTR it was to avoid undesirable results of loading a non-Lisp file.
> 
> `load' MUST allow non-use of a suffix, so you can specify the precise
> file name you mean.  If you say (load "foo") expecting it to load the
> file `foo.el', but it loads `foo' instead, you can't complain.
> 
> However, there is no reason why an autoload should allow the null
> suffix, so we can adopt the more reliable behavior of requiring a
> suffix.

What does this imply in the context of compressed files? I started
this thread because the latest CVS emacs loads via autoload a
compressed file `foo.gz'. I think this behavior is as undesirable as
loading a file `foo' via autoload. Is the arg `must-suffix' too
unspecific here? Would it make sense to have something like an
exclude list for file name suffixes so that a file `foo.gz' is
treated like `foo'??

Roland