28.7 Deleting Frames

A live frame is one that has not been deleted. When a frame is deleted, it is removed from its terminal display, although it may continue to exist as a Lisp object until there are no more references to it.

Command: delete-frame &optional frame force

This function deletes the frame frame. Unless frame is a tooltip, it first runs the hook delete-frame-functions (each function gets one argument, frame). By default, frame is the selected frame.

A frame cannot be deleted as long as its minibuffer serves as surrogate minibuffer for another frame (see Minibuffers and Frames). Normally, you cannot delete a frame if all other frames are invisible, but if force is non-nil, then you are allowed to do so.

Function: frame-live-p frame

The function frame-live-p returns non-nil if the frame frame has not been deleted. The possible non-nil return values are like those of framep. See Frames.

Some window managers provide a command to delete a window. These work by sending a special message to the program that operates the window. When Emacs gets one of these commands, it generates a delete-frame event, whose normal definition is a command that calls the function delete-frame. See Misc Events.