Calling emacsclient

[Thorsten Jolitz]

Hi List, 

with one emacs-daemon (named 'emacs1') running, the following external
call to emacsclient succeeds:

,-----------------------------
| (call 'emacsclient
|             "-s" "emacs1"
|             "-a" ""
|             "-c"  "file...")
`-----------------------------
         
But what I really would need is a more generic version that does not use
the server-name. The manual says:

,------------------------------------------------------------------
| ‘-s server-name’
| ‘--socket-name=server-name’
| 
| Connect to the Emacs server named server-name. The server name is
| given by the variable server-name on the Emacs server. If this
| option is omitted, emacsclient connects to the first server it
| finds. (This option is not supported on MS-Windows.)
`------------------------------------------------------------------

This does not work in my case. If I use

,-----------------------------
| (call 'emacsclient
|             "-c"  "file...")
`-----------------------------

I get:

,-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
| To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".
| emacsclient: No socket or alternate editor.  Please use:
| 
|         --socket-name
|         --server-file      (or environment variable EMACS_SERVER_FILE)
|         --alternate-editor (or environment variable ALTERNATE_EDITOR)
`-----------------------------------------------------------------------

while 

,-----------------------------
| (call 'emacsclient
|             "-a" ""
|             "-c"  "file...")
`-----------------------------

starts a new emacs-daemon (although emacs-server 'emacs1' is running).

Question:
How do I get the behaviour described in the manual: "If this
option [-s] is omitted, emacsclient connects to the first server it
finds." ?

I would need a generic call to emacsclient that first looks for a
running server (which ever it encounters) and only starts a new daemon
if there is no server running already.

I'm on Arch Linux. 

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten