I tried to uninstall a program using apt-get but I can still use it

Question

I tried to uninstall a emacs through terminal in Lubuntu 15 and Its still there.

I used the code:

sudo apt-get remove --purge emacs

This has happened before with a chess program called scid.

Basically, after I deleted emacs, it displays:

sudo apt-get remove --purge emacs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  emacs24 emacs24-bin-common emacs24-common emacs24-common-non-dfsg libm17n-0
  libotf0 m17n-db vim-runtime
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  emacs*
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 to remove and 195 not to upgrade.
After this operation, 25.6 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 125495 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing emacs (46.1) ...

Then when I write

emacs <Enter>

emacs opens up again like nothings happened.

Subsequent removals show:

sudo apt-get remove --purge emacs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'emacs' is not installed, so not removed
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  emacs24 emacs24-bin-common emacs24-common emacs24-common-non-dfsg libm17n-0
  libotf0 m17n-db vim-runtime
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 195 not to upgrade.

Is there a way to delete this program? I installed it through sudo apt-get install emacs, so Its not in my software center.

Answer 1

emacs is a metapackage, meaning it is a package that does not contain anything and just depends on a more specifically named package, in this case emacs24. Try (since you've already removed the metapackage):

sudo apt-get autoremove

Because the emacs24 package is still installed, you can still use emacs, because emacs24 is the one that actually contains the executable.