[Questions] Script and run directories

[dieggsy]

I was wondering:

• Is there a way to create scripts elsewhere/at a specified directory (from inside lisp) ? (Some option to make-script I missed or something like that?)

• Is there a way for scripts to have a notion of where they're being run? For a kinda dumb example, if I wrote:

  (defun my-ls ()
  (format t (with-output-to-string (out)
              (run-program "/bin/ls" '() :output out))))
  
  (scriptl:make-script "ls" 'my-ls)
  

  Any calls to the ls script would only list the files where the script itself resides, not for the directory where the script is being called from.

[rpav]

Actually they should not; when scripts get called in, *default-pathname-defaults* should be bound to the caller's cwd. This should be enough for anything inside the lisp, using merge-pathnames, but you may want to pass it on to things like run-program, where it's unfortunate *default-pathname-defaults* isn't the default.

[dieggsy]

@rpav Ah, I see. when using

(defun my-ls ()
  (dolist (file (directory "*.*"))
    (write-line (namestring file))))

instead, it works as expected. Thanks! So there's no way around this with run-program?

Also, what about making scripts in a different directory than *default-pathname-defaults* ?

[rpav]

If you mean SBCL's run-program, just pass it :directory *default-pathname-defaults*. Others are likely similar.

For make-script, try locally binding it, e.g.,

(let ((*default-pathname-defaults* #P"/path/to/script"))
  (make-script ...)

I'm actually not 100% sure this works, and if it doesn't it's a legit bug. There should be (and it would be trivial to write) something like with-path so you could just do:

(with-path (#P"...")
  ...)

This would save typing out long ugly variable names if you do this a lot.

[dieggsy]

Great, all of this seems to work. Thanks!

EDIT: (Briefly did something sorta dumb, but it's sorted out now).

[rpav]

Try with bef41db, apparently it wasn't doing merge-pathnames on the actual target usage.