[WWdevel] Macro library search path

[Davide P.C. <dp...@un...>]

Folks:

On the discussion board at

	http://webhost.math.rochester.edu/webworkdocs/discuss/msgReader$3244? 
mode=topic&y=2005&m=4&d=22

a user asks how to add directories that can be searched for macro files  
by loadMacros().  The current implementation doesn't provide for this,  
but it would not be hard to do.  One possibility would be to add a  
variable to global.conf that is an array of directories to be searched  
(in the order given).   In dangerousMacros around line 260, you would  
repalce the explicit check of $macroDirectory and  
$courseScriptsDirectory by a loop through the macro directory array.   
(The macroDirectory and courseScriptsDirectory variables can then be  
dropped.)

I would also like to suggest that loadMacros be able to access  
subdirectories of the macro directory (not by searching them  
automatically, but by making explicit references to them).  For  
example, there are several macro files that defined various Parser  
contents, and it would be nice to have a "context" subdirectory of the  
macros directory and then use

	loadMacros("context/LimitedVector.pl");

The curernt loadMacros() will actually do this, but the _init() routine  
stuff won't work for this.  This can be fixed with a single line in  
dangerousMacros.  At around line 205, right after

	my $init_subroutine_name = "_${macro_file_name}_init";

you should add

	$init_subroutine_name =~ s/[^a-z0-9_]/_/gi;

to convert any '/' to a '_' in the name.  (This also converts any other  
special characters to underscores, so that in case the file name  
contains characters that are not legal in a perl subroutine name, they  
will not cause problems with the _init() routine.  This would be a good  
thing to do even if you don't like the sub-directory idea.)

What do you think?

Davide