Re: Inexplicable flaw: non-overridable .emacs

[Kevin Rodgers]

kj wrote:
> In <mailman.972.1173989687.7795.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> Eli Zaretskii 
> <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > > From: kj <socyl@987jk.com.invalid>
> > > Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:15:15 +0000 (UTC)
> > >
> > > Please correct me if I'm wrong, it is my understanding that one
> > > cannot use a command-line switch to tell emacs to read a config
> > > file *other* than the standard ~/.emacs.
>
> > You are only partly wrong: Emacs has a --load command-line switch that
> > would load any file you name.  But such loading is not 100% equivalent
> > to how Emacs loads a .emacs file, because .emacs is read at a certain
> > point during the Emacs session startup, while files given via --load
> > are read at a different point.  So the effects could be subtly
> > different, especially with respect to display setup.
>
> That's good to know, thanks, but, again, I'm puzzled: why would
> Emacs treat ~/.emacs differently from a user-specified alternative?

Because ~/.emacs is loaded between default.el and site-start.el, after
the so-called initial command line options are processed but before the
so-called action options.  If your installation doesn't have a
site-start.el file, you should be OK -- modulo display setup, as Eli
points out.

> It seems perversely unaccommodating on Emacs' part (even if only
> in a passive-agressive sort of way :)  )

--
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA