Andrew Mathas <a.mathas@ic.ac.uk> wrote:
>A suggestion:
>Shouldn't gap have a runtime option, -rc say, which turns off
>the automatic reading of the .gaprc file? I tend to put initialisation
>commands into the .gaprc file which set up the current project I am
>interested in; however sometimes I want to use "plain GAP" (not that it is
>really a problem to run the .gaprc file in these cases just unnecessary).

I agree this would be a useful option. But there is a nice way to
organize gap usage into projects. Keep different projects in different
directories, each such directory containing its own .gaprc. When you
want to work on a particular project, change to the appropriate
directory and start gap. That runs the .gaprc in the current directory
and makes the files in that directory easily available -- no path
prefix is needed to Read them. Of course, you can also write a script
that changes to the appropriate directory before it starts gap, thus
making everything automatic.

With the above scheme you can get "plain gap" with no .gaprc by starting
gap from some directory that doesn't have a .gaprc in it.

I don't know how a .gaprc file in the home directory interacts with one
in the current directory, as I don't have one in my home directory.