Re: Gnu emacs under Windows: .emacs and _emacs and savehist

[Vagn Johansen]

Murray Eisenberg <murray@math.umass.edu> writes:

> Jason Rumney wrote:
>>  .emacs is the
>> standard name for the init file....
>
> So why in the world to the emacs docs simply refer to the file as "init"
> throughout instead of saying ".emacs"??

Because there are other possible file names for the init file (see the docs).
.emacs is probably the most frequently used name ("standard").

>From the emacs 22.1 news file (C-h N)

* Startup Changes in Emacs 22.1

** Init file changes
If the init file ~/.emacs does not exist, Emacs will try
~/.emacs.d/init.el or ~/.emacs.d/init.elc.  Likewise, if the shell init file
~/.emacs_SHELL is not found, Emacs will try ~/.emacs.d/init_SHELL.sh.