I just installed Emacs 24.4 from source (on Ubuntu 14.04). I now get the
following error when running Emacs:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil)
  string-match("/[._]emacs\\.d/?\\'" nil nil)
  command-line()
  normal-top-level()
For debugging, I reduced my ~/.emacs init file to:

(setq debug-on-error t)
(add-to-list 'load-path nil)

Then the error occurs only when starting Emacs with two arguments, where
the first argument is an option, for example --no-splash, and the second
argument is a file name with a suffix, for example a.txt. Some other
observations:

If I remove the option (--no-splash) it works fine,
if I remove the line (add-to-list 'load-path nil) it works fine,
if I run with Emacs v. 24.3 it works fine,
if I change nil to ".", in ~/.emacs it works fine,
if I remove the suffix from the file name, that is: changing a.txt to a, I
get another error: Args out of range: 0.


M-x emacs-version:

GNU Emacs 24.4.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.8) of
2015-01-11 on hakon-ThinkPad-Edge-E540

I built Emacs 24.4.1 from source, using with `--with-xft` option to
configure.

This report was first ask as a question on http://emacs.stackexchange.com/

See the following link:

http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/7295/problem-with-nil-element-in-load-path-in-emacs-24-4

Best regards,
Håkon Hægland