How to show my .emacs file in finder? I am new to Mac. I installed emacs, but I can't see my .emacs file in the finder. I can open the file from inside emacs, and I saved another copy on my desktop, but it's not showing.
These files starting with a dot are meant to be hidden in *nix.

To see them in terminal add the -a flag to the ls command:

ls -a


To see them in the Finder you will want to set a hidden preference (this is global change tho, you'll see all your hidden files everywhere):

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE


and then restart the finder:

killall Finder


To reverse and hide them again:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE &amp;&amp; killall Finder


Source

Update to add:

Lately I've only been able to get this to work when the string com.apple.finder is lower case!  I think this happened starting in 10.9, but not certain.

So you'll want:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE;