Subject: Re: bug#8220: 24.0.50; (On Windows XP) "c:\_emacs" isn't found during startup

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:25:21 +0200

> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:56:03 +0800
> From: Jason Rumney <[email-masked]>
> Cc: 
> 
> On 11/03/2011 10:35, Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> 
> > makes this less than clear-cut, and in fact, the order in which
> > [._]emacs is searched (I'm ignoring ~/.emacs.d/init.el) is
> >
> >    %HOME%\.emacs
> >    %HOME%\_emacs
> >    C:\.emacs
> >    %APPDATA%\.emacs
> >    %APPDATA%\_emacs
> >    
> 
> More accurately, if %HOME% is set explicitly, then init files are 
> searched there.
> Otherwise if c:\.emacs exists, then %HOME% is implicitly set to C:\ (for 
> backwards compatibility with older versions)
> Otherwise %HOME% is implicitly set to the user's Application Data 
> directory, obtained through system calls.

I tried to explain this algorithm in the manual in more user-friendly
terms.  Please take a look (posted in another mail in bug #8221).