Re: How can I remove the functions I do not want

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

Qiang Guo <mcknight0219@gmail.com> writes:

> Right, if you don't load them, they are just files stored on
> your disk. If by saying uninstall you do mean delete those
> files, sure, you can delete unwanted files. They are usually
> located in /usr/share/emacs/23.X/lisp/
>

While you can do this, it is extremely dangerous. What functions/files a
mode or command relies upon is not always obvious and not always
restricted to the same file. For example, simple.el contains lots of
core functionality that may not be obvious. 

Note also that removing lots of these files is unlikely to change the
memory footprint of emacs. Emacs uses a dumped image and changing the
files on disk will not affect this. It won't necessarily remove/reduce
the list of commands that appear with things like apropos etc. 

As pointed out by others, many of the functions available in emacs are
not loaded until you run the command. You can sometimes see this when
you do a describe function and its documentation refers to arguments not
being available until loaded. 

Frequently, requests like this a due to some other issue that the user
want to solve and there is usually another way to get somethning closer
to what is desired without the need to change/delete files. It is
possibly best to explain exactly what the problem is and see if anyone
has better solutions. 

regards,

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au