I have my emacs configuration file under ~/.emacs with just one declaration:
(setq default-directory "/var/www/")
What I want to do is to C-x C-f and go directly to my apache directory. But I tried using C-x C-f and my current directory is HOME.
The file gets loaded, because I used this: (shell) and the shell gets opened. Anyone knows where my error is? I just want to set the start-up directory in htdocs.
default-directory does not do what you seem to think. C-h v
default-directory
default-directory is a variable defined in `buffer.c'.
Its value is "/"
Local in buffer stackoverflow.com/questions/14914353; global value is nil
Automatically becomes buffer-local when set in any fashion.
This variable is safe as a file local variable if its value
satisfies the predicate `stringp'.
Documentation:
Name of default directory of current buffer. Should end with slash.
To interactively change the default directory, use command `cd'.
It's a buffer-local (i.e. buffer specific) variable, meaning its value is different depending on which buffer is currently active. So when you think you've set it to "/var/www", you are simply visiting a file already in that directory.
If you want to open a file from "/var/www", you need to make your own command
that binds "/var/www" to default-directory.
Just in case someone is wondering how to do this:
As @Pacha was saying, when emacs starts, the welcome screen shows up and it will change your working directory to the command-line-default-directory
So, for example, If you want your default directory to be "~/", add this to your .emacs and you should be on track.
(setq command-line-default-directory "~/")
(setq default-directory "~/")
Solved it, it was a really weird problem.
Every time I try to open a file from the default buffer (*GNU Emacs*) it changes the default directory to ~/, but when I try to open a file from another buffer, it opens to the one I specified in my variable.
