C.1 Action Arguments

Here is a table of the action arguments and options:

‘file’

‘--file=file’

‘--find-file=file’

‘--visit=file’

Visit file using find-file. See section Visiting Files. If you visit several files at startup in this way, Emacs also displays a Buffer Menu buffer to show you what files it has visited. You can inhibit that by setting inhibit-startup-buffer-menu to t.

‘+linenum file’

Visit file using find-file, then go to line number linenum in it.

‘+linenum:columnnum file’

Visit file using find-file, then go to line number linenum and put point at column number columnnum.

‘-l file’

‘--load=file’

Load a Lisp library named file with the function load. See section Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs. If file is not an absolute file name, the library can be found either in the current directory, or in the Emacs library search path as specified with EMACSLOADPATH (see section General Variables).

Warning: If previous command-line arguments have visited files, the current directory is the directory of the last file visited.

‘-L dir’

‘--directory=dir’

Add directory dir to the variable load-path.

‘-f function’

‘--funcall=function’

Call Lisp function function. If it is an interactive function (a command), it reads the arguments interactively just as if you had called the same function with a key sequence. Otherwise, it calls the function with no arguments.

‘--eval=expression’

‘--execute=expression’

Evaluate Lisp expression expression.

‘--insert=file’

Insert the contents of file into the current buffer. This is like what M-x insert-file does. See section Miscellaneous File Operations.

‘--kill’

Exit from Emacs without asking for confirmation.

‘--help’

Print a usage message listing all available options, then exit successfully.

‘--version’

Print Emacs version, then exit successfully.