sb> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: sb> Assume a file bar.el to be bytecompiled: sb> ;;; bar.el --- do something interesting sb> ... sb> (require 'foo) sb> ... sb> ;;; bar.el ends here sb> What difference (if any) does it make if foo.el (assuming foo.elc sb> hasn't been bytecompiled yet) or foo.elc is loaded? sb> Clearer? Of course, a file could do anything at all at byte-compile time, e.g. (eval-when-compile (when (and (blue-moon) (steve-in-a-hurry)) (kill-emacs))) So there may always be unfortunate divergences between .el and .elc files. Well-behaved lisp files won't though. Martin