# Glossary

The glossary explains most of the special terms we use in this documentation. some of these are originally explained in the Emacs manual or the Emacs Lisp reference, but we reproduce them here for convenience.

init file
user init file

  Your main Emacs configuration file. It’s typically located in your user emacs directory at `$HOME/.emacs.d/init.el`. Emacs also looks at `$HOME/.emacs`, but this location is not recommended anymore. To find out the actual path to your init file of your Emacs session inspect the value of the variable `user-init-file` with ``C`-`h` `v` `user`-`init`-`file``. You can visit it directly with ``M`-`:` `(find`-`file` `user`-`init`-`file)``.

  See also

  :infonode:`(emacs)Init File`

    More information about the init file.

  :infonode:`(elisp)Init File`

    Programming interface for the init file.

user emacs directory

  The directory for all Emacs related files of the current user, at `~/.emacs.d/`. Many Emacs packages create data files in this directory, and it holds the recommended location for the init file at `~/.emacs.d/init.el`.

registered syntax checker

  A syntax checker in `flycheck-checkers`. Flycheck will only use these syntax checkers when checking buffers automatically.

verification buffer

  A buffer shown by `M-x flycheck-verify-setup`. This buffer contains information about the Flycheck setup for the current buffer.

executable option
executable options

  Options to override the executables of syntax checkers that run external commands. They are named `flycheck-checker-executable`, e.g. `flycheck-c/c++-clang-executable` for `c/c++-clang`.

  Flycheck implicit defines these options for all syntax checkers defined with `flycheck-define-checker`.