Re: Inexplicable flaw: non-overridable .emacs

[kj <socyl@987jk.com.invalid>]

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

>Could you please tell why you don't want to have a .emacs file?

Nothing against an .emacs file, but occasionally I want to run
Emacs with a drastically different set of customizations from what's
in my .emacs file.  Since a lot of these customizations pertain
display, I need to do some experimentation to determine whether
the --load option will do what I need. 

kj
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