GNU Emacs Manual - Find Init

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### How Emacs Finds Your Init File

Normally Emacs uses the environment variable `HOME` to find ``.emacs'`; that's what ``~'` means in a file name. But if you have done `su`, Emacs tries to find your own ``.emacs'`, not that of the user you are currently pretending to be. The idea is that you should get your own editor customizations even if you are running as the super user.

More precisely, Emacs first determines which user's init file to use. It gets the user name from the environment variables `LOGNAME` and `USER`; if neither of those exists, it uses effective user-ID. If that user name matches the real user-ID, then Emacs uses `HOME`; otherwise, it looks up the home directory corresponding to that user name in the system's data base of users.

# Dealing with Common Problems

If you type an Emacs command you did not intend, the results are often mysterious. This chapter tells what you can do to cancel your mistake or recover from a mysterious situation. Emacs bugs and system crashes are also considered.

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