I'm putting together a trivial module for Rules to set url_aliases uniquely, because I can't conditionalize the pattern in pathauto the way I would like to.

The current pathauto_create_alias() function does pretty much exactly what I want, except that I cannot specify the pattern to use when I call it. Would it be possible to add a new, optional argument $pattern = NULL, and adjust the pattern load behavior such that it is only run when a $pattern argument has not been supplied? If that would break the API, would it alternatively be possible to introduce pathauto_create_alias_from_pattern() using essentially the current code, and turn pathauto_create_alias() into a trivially wrapping call to that?

Incidentally, the description of parameters for this function in API.txt is stale. There is no longer a $placeholders parameter, and the $data paramater is not mentioned.