What's the startup sequence for Emacs?

Question

I find .emacs, and ~/.emacs.d/init.el.

What those files/directories are for? What's the startup sequence of emacs? Is there any way that makes emacs not to read ~/.emacs.d?

Answer 1

emacs -q or emacs --no-init-file will cause emacs not to read the ~/.emacs file. It should not try to read the ~/.emacs.d if there is a ~/.emacs file. If there isn't a ~/.emacs file it will read ~/.emacs.d/init.el. See the emacs wiki for more info.

See the elisp manual for info on startup.