Re: Making a function than can only be used interactively

[carlmarcos]

Jul 3, 2022, 20:14 by help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org:

>> I do not want people to use the function non-interactively.
>>
>
> An interactive call is fundamentally a combination of "run the
> interactive spec to get the args, and then call the function with those
> args".  So, in a sense you can't avoid it.
>
> But you can discourage non-interactive calls in various ways, depending
> on how important you think it is.  The most standard way is to use
>
>  (declare (interactive-only <foo>))
>
Others have suggested 

(if (called-interactively-p 'interactive)

and

(only-interactive)

But I see how your `(declare (interactive-only <foo>))` statement would work 
better.


> so that the compiler will emit a warning when it sees a non-interactive
> call to that function (<foo> is the replacement you recommend for
> non-interactive calls).
>
> A more "forceful" way is to wrap your interactive function inside
> a trivial keyboard macro:
>
>  (defalias 'my-command
>  (vector (lambda (...)
>  (interactive ..)
>  ...)))
>
> this way `my-command` is a valid command but it's not a valid function.
> I'd not recommend such a measure, tho.
>
>
>  Stefan
>