Need help understanding load-image

[lc9er]

I'm trying to understand how to load an image saved to disk, in order to restore a repl session. (load-image (slurp "someFile.jimage")) returns a table...and I'm not sure what to do after that. I'm not able to grasp how to access the data loaded, if this can be used to restore a new repl to the saved state in what was loaded, or if I've just misunderstood the use of load-image.

[CosmicToast]

Images operate on environment tables (just like import), so you need to merge it in.
Example to save a repl:

(def a :a)
(curenv) # demo to show :a got defined
(spit "env" (make-image (curenv)))

Demo to load the state:

# merge with no prefix like with "use", do not re-export
(merge-module (curenv) (load-image (slurp "env")) "" false)
a # => :a

[lc9er]

Got it and I see what I was missing (merge-module). Thank you for taking the time to demo this.

[ianthehenry]

use and import can load images in addition to source files, so if you want to restore an image in someFile.jimage, you can call (use ./someFile). And if you're developing with the built-in repl, you can run janet -l ./someFile to start the repl with your previous image loaded into the initial environment.