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(emacs)Disabling

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Disabling Commands
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   Disabling a command marks the command as requiring confirmation
before it can be executed.  The purpose of disabling a command is to
prevent beginning users from executing it by accident and being
confused.

   An attempt to invoke a disabled command interactively in Emacs
displays a window containing the command's name, its documentation, and
some instructions on what to do immediately; then Emacs asks for input
saying whether to execute the command as requested, enable it and
execute it, or cancel.  If you decide to enable the command, you are
asked whether to do this permanently or just for the current session.
(Enabling permanently works by automatically editing your `.emacs'
file.)  You can also type `!' to enable _all_ commands, for the current
session only.

   The direct mechanism for disabling a command is to put a non-`nil'
`disabled' property on the Lisp symbol for the command.  Here is the
Lisp program to do this:

     (put 'delete-region 'disabled t)

   If the value of the `disabled' property is a string, that string is
included in the message displayed when the command is used:

     (put 'delete-region 'disabled
          "It's better to use `kill-region' instead.\n")

   You can make a command disabled either by editing the `.emacs' file
directly or with the command `M-x disable-command', which edits the
`.emacs' file for you.  Likewise, `M-x enable-command' edits `.emacs'
to enable a command permanently.  Note: Init File.

   Whether a command is disabled is independent of what key is used to
invoke it; disabling also applies if the command is invoked using
`M-x'.  Disabling a command has no effect on calling it as a function
from Lisp programs.