() Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org>
() Sat, 17 Nov 2012 13:02:47 +0200

   Sorry, I just couldn't imagine that someone will not know about
   buffer-file-name and current-buffer.

To be fair, guessing those requires knowing something about how ‘load’
works.  Emacs is buffer-centric so it ‘load’s by first populating a
buffer then ‘read’ing from it.  Guile, as a counter-example, implements
‘load’ by ‘read’ing from a "port".  Other systems might mmap(2) or talk
to a daemon or whatever.

I see that (info "(emacs) Lisp Libraries")
says only:

 To "load" an Emacs Lisp file, type `M-x load-file'.  This command reads
 a file name using the minibuffer, and executes the contents of that
 file as Emacs Lisp code.  It is not necessary to visit the file first;
 this command reads the file directly from disk, not from an existing
 Emacs buffer.

In (info "(elisp) How Programs Do Loading")
there is a bit more:

 Whatever the name under which the file is eventually found, and the
 directory where Emacs found it, Emacs sets the value of the variable
 `load-file-name' to that file's name.

 [...]

 When loading a source file (not compiled), `load' performs
 character set translation just as Emacs would do when visiting the
 file.  *Note Coding Systems::.

but again, how ‘load’ actually does its job is never detailed.  To my
ears, this is a just omission, and thus OP's question has some merit.

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