GNU bug report logs - #14000
24.3.50; electric-pair-post-self-insert-function does not handle nested parentheses

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Message #14 received at 14000 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: "'Carsten Bormann'" <cabo <at> tzi.org>,
	"'Stefan Monnier'" <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Cc: 14000 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: RE: bug#14000: 24.3.50;
	electric-pair-post-self-insert-function does not handle
	nestedparentheses
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 06:18:43 -0700

> But if you live in a world of paired parentheses (and I 
> thought Emacs-Lispers were!)

Mostly, yes.

> you want to add them in pairs, always.

No, not at all.  Some people do, but my guess would be that they are a minority.
Probably most if not all who live in a world of paired parens have tried
behavior such as electric pairing, but I'd guess that relatively few who tried
it have stayed with it.

Perhaps it's a bit like the use of the so-called "structured" editors that were
pushed by some in the 1980s: they pretty much forced you to only perform actions
that kept things well-formed, always - like filling out forms.

Real users hated them, for the most part.  What they wanted was instead the
typical best-of-both-worlds behavior that Emacs offered: you can do anything at
all, but you can also easily ask the editor to check text for well-formedness
etc.  IOW, check on-demand, not preformed or forced form.

Not that electric pairing prevents you from deleting parens, so they are no
longer necessarily paired (that would really be like those structured editors),
but the analogy is not too off-base.

Personally, I use `show-paren-mode' (and `blink-matching-paren').  But I don't
program in C etc., and I suppose that the language used might make some
difference wrt preference.

Wrt right parens, some Lisp dialects (e.g. Franz Lisp) have allowed you to use
`]' to act as a sufficient number of `)' to reach an even number (balance).  For
quick interactive evaluation it could sometimes be handy.
E.g. (setq foo '((a) (((b (c d].

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