Thanks, Tassilo.
It turns out that the problem is caused by another line of my .emacs file,
which I want to append the load-path,
(setq load-path (append (list nil "~/lisp") load-path))
if the "nil" is deleted, it works fine. But I don't understand why adding
the current directory to load-path messes up the loading of AUCTeX. I don't
have any lisp package s in my current directory.



> >>Hi Shiyuan,
>
> >>     I want to swap the C-j and C-m key. According to the documentation,
> >> AUCTeX will evaluate the LaTeX-mode-hook so I add the following to my
> >> .emacs,
> >>
> >> (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook (lambda()
> >>                  (local-set-key (kbd "C-m")
> >> 'reindent-then-newline-and-
> >>indent)))
> >> (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook (lambda()
> >>                  (local-set-key (kbd "C-j") 'newline)))
>
> >Looks good, I'd say.
>
> >> However, it has no effect. It seems it's not evaluated at all.
>
> >Are you sure that AUCTeX is really loaded?  If it is, then the output of
> >C-h f latex-mode RET is:
>
> >,----[ C-h f latex-mode RET ]
> >| latex-mode is an alias for `TeX-latex-mode' in `tex-site.el'.
> >|
> >| (latex-mode)
> >|
> >| Major mode in AUCTeX for editing LaTeX files.
> >| See info under AUCTeX for full documentation.
> >|
> >| [...]
> >`----
>
> >If AUCTeX is not loaded, then the standard emacs latex-mode (that
> >doesn't define/use LaTeX-mode-hook) is used producing this output:
> >
> >,----[ C-h f latex-mode RET (in emacs -Q)]
> >| latex-mode is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `tex-mode.el'.
> >|
> >| (latex-mode)
> >|
> >| Parent mode: `tex-mode'.
> >`----
> >
> >Bye,
> >Tassilo
>