Re: autoload and auto-compression-mode

[Richard M. Stallman]

    Why does autoload use `must-suffix'?  No clue.  Anyone?

ISTR it was to avoid undesirable results of loading a non-Lisp file.

`load' MUST allow non-use of a suffix, so you can specify the precise
file name you mean.  If you say (load "foo") expecting it to load the
file `foo.el', but it loads `foo' instead, you can't complain.

However, there is no reason why an autoload should allow the null
suffix, so we can adopt the more reliable behavior of requiring a
suffix.