C.2 Initial Options
The initial options specify parameters for the Emacs session. This section describes the more general initial options; some other options specifically related to the X Window System appear in the following sections.
Some initial options affect the loading of the initialization file.
Normally, Emacs first loads site-start.el if it exists, then
your own initialization file if it exists, and finally the default
initialization file default.el if it exists (see The Emacs Initialization File). Certain options prevent loading of some of these files or
substitute other files for them.
‘ -chdir directory’ ¶‘ --chdir=directory’
Change to directory before doing anything else. This is mainly used by session management in X so that Emacs starts in the same directory as it stopped. This makes desktop saving and restoring easier.
‘ -t device’ ¶‘ --terminal=device’
Use device as the device for terminal input and output. This
option implies ‘ --no-window-system’.
‘ -d display’ ¶‘ --display=display’
Use the X Window System and use the display named display to open the initial Emacs frame. See Specifying the Display Name, for more details.
‘ -nw’ ¶‘ --no-window-system’
Don’t communicate directly with the window system, disregarding the
DISPLAY environment variable even if it is set. This means that
Emacs uses the terminal from which it was launched for all its display
and input.
‘ -batch’‘ --batch’
Run Emacs in batch mode. Batch mode is used for running
programs written in Emacs Lisp from shell scripts, makefiles, and so
on. To invoke a Lisp program, use the ‘ -batch’ option in
conjunction with one or more of ‘ -l’, ‘ -f’ or ‘ --eval’
(see Action Arguments). See Command Argument Example, for an example.
In batch mode, Emacs does not display the text being edited, and the
standard terminal interrupt characters such as C-z and C-c
have their usual effect. Emacs functions that normally print a
message in the echo area will print to either the standard output
stream ( stdout) or the standard error stream ( stderr)
instead. (To be precise, functions like prin1, princ
and print print to stdout, while message and
error print to stderr.) Functions that normally read
keyboard input from the minibuffer take their input from the
terminal’s standard input stream ( stdin) instead.
‘ --batch’ implies ‘ -q’ (do not load an initialization file),
but site-start.el is loaded nonetheless. It also causes Emacs
to exit after processing all the command options. In addition, it
disables auto-saving except in buffers for which auto-saving is
explicitly requested, and when saving files it omits the fsync
system call unless otherwise requested.
Errors that occur when running a ‘ --batch’ Emacs will result in
an Emacs Lisp backtrace being printed. To disable this behavior, set
backtrace-on-error-noninteractive to nil.
‘ --script file’ ¶
Run Emacs in batch mode, like ‘ --batch’, and then read and
execute the Lisp code in file.
The normal use of this option is in executable script files that run Emacs. They can start with this text on the first line
#!/usr/bin/emacs --script
which will invoke Emacs with ‘ --script’ and supply the name of
the script file as file. Emacs Lisp then treats the ‘ #!’
on this first line as a comment delimiter.
‘ --no-build-details’ ¶
Omit details like system name and build time from the Emacs
executable, so that builds are more deterministic. This switch is not
meant for regular (or interactive) use, since it makes commands like
system-name return nil.
‘ -q’ ¶‘ --no-init-file’
Do not load any initialization file (see The Emacs Initialization File). When Emacs
is invoked with this option, the Customize facility does not allow
options to be saved (see Easy Customization Interface). This option does
not disable loading site-start.el.
‘ --no-site-file’ ¶‘ -nsl’
Do not load site-start.el (see The Emacs Initialization File). The ‘ -Q’
option does this too, but other options like ‘ -q’ do not.
‘ --no-site-lisp’ ¶
Do not include the site-lisp directories in load-path
(see The Emacs Initialization File). The ‘ -Q’ option does this too.
‘ --no-splash’ ¶
Do not display a startup screen. You can also achieve this effect by
setting the variable inhibit-startup-screen to non- nil
in your initialization file (see Entering Emacs).
‘ --no-x-resources’ ¶
Do not load X resources. You can also achieve this effect by setting
the variable inhibit-x-resources to t in your
initialization file (see X Resources).
‘ -Q’ ¶‘ --quick’
Start Emacs with minimum customizations. This is similar to using
‘ -q’, ‘ --no-site-file’, ‘ --no-site-lisp’,
‘ --no-x-resources’, and ‘ --no-splash’ together.
‘ -daemon’‘ --daemon[=name]’‘ --bg-daemon[=name]’‘ --fg-daemon[=name]’
Start Emacs as a daemon: after Emacs starts up, it starts the Emacs
server without opening any frames. You can then use the
emacsclient command to connect to Emacs for editing.
(Optionally, you can specify an explicit name for the server; if
you do, you will need to specify the same name when you invoke
emacsclient, via its --socket-name option, see
emacsclient Options.) See Using Emacs as a Server, for information
about using Emacs as a daemon. A “background” daemon disconnects
from the terminal and runs in the background (‘ --daemon’ is an
alias for ‘ --bg-daemon’).
‘ --no-desktop’ ¶
Do not reload any saved desktop. See Saving Emacs Sessions.
‘ -u user’ ¶‘ --user=user’
Load user’s initialization file instead of your own 23.
‘ --debug-init’ ¶
Enable the Emacs Lisp debugger for errors in the init file. See Entering the Debugger on an Error in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
‘ --module-assertions’ ¶
Enable expensive correctness checks when dealing with dynamically loadable modules. This is intended for module authors that wish to verify that their module conforms to the module API requirements. The option makes Emacs abort if a module-related assertion triggers. See Writing Dynamically-Loaded Modules in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
‘ --dump-file=file’ ¶
Load the dumped Emacs state from the named file. By default, an
installed Emacs will look for its dump state in a file named
emacs.pdmp in the directory where the Emacs installation
puts the architecture-dependent files; the variable
exec-directory holds the name of that directory. emacs
is the name of the Emacs executable file, normally just emacs.
(When you invoke Emacs from the src directory where it was
built without installing it, it will look for the dump file in the
directory of the executable.) If you rename or move the dump file to
a different place, you can use this option to tell Emacs where to find
that file.
Footnotes
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This option has no effect on MS-Windows.