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I want to go to a specific directory after I start a shell. So I put these lines in my .emacs file:
(shell)
(shell-command "cd C:/MyStartUp/ThisDirectory")
(setq default-directory "C:/MyStartUp/ThisDirectory")
However, whenever I start emacs, the shell ends up in this directory
c:\emacs-26.3\bin>
How do I fix this?
In some circumstances, having the trailing forward slash for the default-directory is necessary. My recollection is that this may depend upon the OS. It is possible to pass commands to the shell buffer under-the-hood with comint-send-string and comint-send-input, but that appears to be unnecessary in this particular use-case. The beginning directory in the shell buffer will be inherited from the default-directory, which can be let-bound:
(let ((default-directory "C:/MyStartUp/ThisDirectory/"))
(shell))
/ in the end in my case, I forgot to add that when I posted here. After I used your command, my starting directory becomes c:\> but never goes to the default-directory. Although my M-x find-file does start to look for files in that default-directory.
– tony
Jul 29 '20 at 16:20
Emacs -q) and then evaluate the code above, either in a *scratch* buffer or just by typing M-x eval-expression aka M-: Perhaps there is a typo in your path or something in your config that is causing problems.
– lawlist
Jul 29 '20 at 18:25
ThisDirectory I used as an example actually contains space and - like OneDrive - ThisDirectory. So I incorrectly used \ for the space and other characters. It turns out not only it's not needed, it confused this shell command to go to the correct path. Thanks all for the help.
– tony
Jul 30 '20 at 18:15
