Spurious error message?

[Rusi]

emacsclient is supposed to 'jump into' an already emacs.

What if there is no emacs running?  I get:

$ emacsclient foo.txt 
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)

Ok so far so good. So I use the --alternate-editor

$ emacsclient --alternate-editor emacs foo.txt
emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".

After printng which, it starts ok, editing the file!!

IOW I find the error message spurious.

Am I missing something?