diff --git a/doc/manual/src/language/values.md b/doc/manual/src/language/values.md index f09400d02..6fc8c0369 100644 --- a/doc/manual/src/language/values.md +++ b/doc/manual/src/language/values.md @@ -150,6 +150,20 @@ recognized as a path. `a.${foo}/b.${bar}` is a syntactically valid division operation. `./a.${foo}/b.${bar}` is a path. + When a path appears in an antiquotation, and is thus coerced into a string, + the path is first copied into the Nix store and the resulting string is + the Nix store path. For instance `"${./foo.txt}" will cause `foo.txt` in + the current directory to be copied into the Nix store and result in the + string `"/nix/store/-foo.txt"`. + + Note that the Nix language assumes that all input files will remain + _unchanged_ during the course of the Nix expression evaluation. + If you for example antiquote a file path during a `nix repl` session, and + then later in the same session, after having changed the file contents, + evaluate the antiquotation with the file path again, then Nix will still + return the first store path. It will _not_ reread the file contents to + produce a different Nix store path. + - Boolean *Booleans* with values `true` and `false`.