lineprovide

Lineprovide is a term that appears in certain programming communities to describe a mechanism for declaring or provisioning features or content on a per-line basis within a text-centric or line-oriented environment. It is not part of a standard language specification and has no single canonical implementation, so its exact meaning can vary between projects or educational examples.

Purpose and concept

The basic idea of lineprovide is to register a “line feature” or to indicate that a module can supply content or behavior for lines in a stream, file, or editor buffer. This is often paired with a corresponding linerequire (or lineuse) to express dependencies, so that consumers can request a line-based capability and have it loaded or activated as needed.

Semantics and usage

In systems that use lineprovide, a call typically adds entries to a registry keyed by feature name, potentially including metadata such as version, author, or applicability to certain line ranges. A consumer requests a feature, and the runtime ensures the relevant module or plugin is available, or that the appropriate line-based processing is prepared.

Example (conceptual)

lineprovide('syntax-highlighting', {version: '1.0'})

linerequire('syntax-highlighting')

Applications and context

Lineprovide is most likely to appear in educational materials about module systems, in lightweight or domain-specific languages that emphasize line-by-line processing, or in text editors and tooling that support dynamic line-based plugins. It shares a conceptual goal with broader module systems: to manage dependencies and loadable features, but it is scoped to line-oriented provisioning.

Relation to other concepts

Lineprovide is conceptually similar to provide/require in Lisp and to import or load mechanisms in other languages, but with a focus on line-level delivery or activation. Because it is not standardized, its exact behavior is defined by the project using it.