When can MC find stacks?

[J. Landman Gay]

David Epstein wrote:
> I am trying to understand under what conditions Metacard 2.5 can find a
> stack that is called without its path, i.e., by a "go stack <shortName>"
> command.  My tentative and incomplete list is below, but I wondered if the
> full rule set is explained somewhere.

There is this from the 2.7 change log:

***
Stack Loading Overhaul
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The order of and places where stacks are searched for on the filing 
system has
been updated. Upon attempting to load a stack with filename <filename>, 
the engine
attempts to open files in the following order:
   1) Attempts to open a file <filename>
   3) Attempts to open a file <current_dir>/<leaf>
   4) Attempts to open a file <startup_dir>/<leaf>
   5) Attempts to open a file <engine_dir>/<leaf>
   6) Attempts to open a file <mc_path_i>/<leaf>
   7) Attempts to open a file <path_i>/<leaf>
   8) Attempts to open a file <home_dir>/<leaf>
   9) Attempts to open a file <home_dir>/stacks/<leaf>
   10) Attempts to open a file <home_dir>/components/<leaf>
Where
   <current_dir> is the current working directory (i.e. the value of
'the folder')
   <startup_dir> is the directory that was current at the time the
engine was started up
   <engine_dir> is the directory containing the engine executable
   <mc_path_i> is the i'th path present in the MCPATH environment variable
   <path_i> is the i'th path present in the PATH environment variable
   <home_dir> is the value of the HOME directory
If any paths depend on an environment variable that doesn't exist, that
step is skipped.
***

> A related question:  Is it good practice to use the file extension ".mc" or
> ".rev" in a "go stack <shortName>" command?

It doesn't matter which one you use, or whether you use one at all. The 
engine doesn't look at the extension when determining if the file is a 
stack, it looks at the internal file structure.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com