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28.7 Deleting Windows

Deleting a window removes it from the frame’s window tree. If the window is a live window, it disappears from the screen. If the window is an internal window, its child windows are deleted too.

Even after a window is deleted, it continues to exist as a Lisp object, until there are no more references to it. Window deletion can be reversed, by restoring a saved window configuration (see Window Configurations).

command delete-window \&optional window​

This function removes window from display and returns nil. If window is omitted or nil, it defaults to the selected window.

If deleting the window would leave no more windows in the window tree (e.g., if it is the only live window in the frame) or all remaining windows on window’s frame are side windows (see Side Windows), an error is signaled. If window is part of an atomic window (see Atomic Windows), this function tries to delete the root of that atomic window instead.

By default, the space taken up by window is given to one of its adjacent sibling windows, if any. However, if the variable window-combination-resize is non-nil, the space is proportionally distributed among any remaining windows in the same window combination. See Recombining Windows.

The behavior of this function may be altered by the window parameters of window, so long as the variable ignore-window-parameters is nil. If the value of the delete-window window parameter is t, this function ignores all other window parameters. Otherwise, if the value of the delete-window window parameter is a function, that function is called with the argument window, in lieu of the usual action of delete-window. See Window Parameters.

command delete-other-windows \&optional window​

This function makes window fill its frame, deleting other windows as necessary. If window is omitted or nil, it defaults to the selected window. An error is signaled if window is a side window (see Side Windows). If window is part of an atomic window (see Atomic Windows), this function tries to make the root of that atomic window fill its frame. The return value is nil.

The behavior of this function may be altered by the window parameters of window, so long as the variable ignore-window-parameters is nil. If the value of the delete-other-windows window parameter is t, this function ignores all other window parameters. Otherwise, if the value of the delete-other-windows window parameter is a function, that function is called with the argument window, in lieu of the usual action of delete-other-windows. See Window Parameters.

Also, if ignore-window-parameters is nil, this function does not delete any window whose no-delete-other-windows parameter is non-nil.

command delete-windows-on \&optional buffer-or-name frame​

This function deletes all windows showing buffer-or-name, by calling delete-window on those windows. buffer-or-name should be a buffer, or the name of a buffer; if omitted or nil, it defaults to the current buffer. If there are no windows showing the specified buffer, this function does nothing. If the specified buffer is a minibuffer, an error is signaled.

If there is a dedicated window showing the buffer, and that window is the only one on its frame, this function also deletes that frame if it is not the only frame on the terminal.

The optional argument frame specifies which frames to operate on:

  • nil means operate on all frames.
  • t means operate on the selected frame.
  • visible means operate on all visible frames.
  • 0 means operate on all visible or iconified frames.
  • A frame means operate on that frame.

Note that this argument does not have the same meaning as in other functions which scan all live windows (see Cyclic Window Ordering). Specifically, the meanings of t and nil here are the opposite of what they are in those other functions.