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How Emacs Finds Your Init File
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   Normally Emacs uses the environment variable `HOME' to find
`.emacs'; that's what `~' means in a file name.  But if you run Emacs
from a shell started by `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.