Add `find` method to require

[rumkin]

Actually it's very strange behaviour of require.resolve, which throws an error when package not found. Add require.find method which would return null if package not found.

[missinglink]

Implementing this behaviour on your own is trivial:

function find( moduleName ){
  try {
    return require.resolve( moduleName );
  } catch( e ){
    return null;
  }
}

What exactly is strange about it and why do you feel it is a wide enough issue that it deserves a new core API method?

[rumkin]

@missinglink Yep, it's trivial. And platform API should be clean and trivial, isn't? But the problem is that require is context-dependent function (it works different in each file). So it means that I should to implement find method in each file. It's not rational. And finally if there is way to do something without throwing an Error it should be done so.

[fampinheiro]

@rumkin you can use a module like optional if you don't want to wrap your requires.

[feross]

-1. The module loading code is Stability: 5 - Locked and unlikely to ever change.

Just use @missinglink's snippet or the optional module.

[rumkin]

@fampinheiro Are you serious? Was you looking it's source? It will not work like it should because it not context-dependent and couldn't be.
@feross It's for node API. iojs will change loading code because it cannot use node_modules folder forever.

[aredridel]

Why can't it?

[rumkin]

@aredridel Because iojs could not control Joyent policy so backward compatibility will be broken soon (after version 1.0). To prevent a mess of io and node packages module directory should be renamed.

[aredridel]

Not sure why they'd be separate. node_modules is deeply baked in, and the module system is locked stability.

and there's no guarantee that a breaking change will ever happen, nor would changing the folder name help that (it'd only break more)

[missinglink]

@rumkin, @aredridel please stick to the reported issue and avoid speculation.
https://github.com/iojs/io.js/blob/v0.12/CONTRIBUTING.md#issue-contributions

[chrisdickinson]

I don't think this will change in the near future:

1. It would expand the surface area of a locked subsystem.
2. This behavior can be approximated in userland (and there exist packages to make that easier!)

Closing for now.