This is a fairly old topic, and does not apply to the "init" script found in current woof-ce Puppies.
In the currrent "init", searching can be avoided by simply specifying "pupsfs=<name, label or uuid of partition> and "psubdir=<sub-directory within partition>" as boot parmaters, e.g. "pupsfs=Work psubdir=/puppy/xenial".
gyro