As an emacs user, one of the biggest contributors (other than SLIME method list prompts and the like) to my appreciation for Lisp is Paredit[1]. If you ever fi

As an emacs user, one of the biggest contributors (other than SLIME method list prompts and the like) to my appreciation for Lisp is Paredit[1]. If you ever find yourself frustrated with counting parentheses, this is the thing for you. Essentially, it only adds delimiters in pairs - so you never delete closing parenthese, and provides functions for (| indicates cursor location)- 1. 'slurp' the token on either side of a list (|a b c) d -> (|a b c d) a (|b c d) -> (a |b c d) 2. 'barf' elements from either side of list (a |b c d) -> (a b c) d (a |b c d) -> a (b c d) 3. 'drill down' into nearest list (|a b c (d e f)) -> (a b c (|d e f)) 4. 'break out' of current list (a b c (d e |f)) -> (a b c |(d e f)) 5. And more, like 'jump across next list', 'delete next list', etc. Using any of these commands re-indents the code. It is the best method I have ever encountered in any language environment for doing 'code surgery' like placing existing code inside conditionals. I even use it for C (although it is not nearly as smart about C/C++ as it is about Lisp, so the benefit is not as great - c'est la vie. Perhaps one day I will attempt to hack decent C/C++ support into paredit). If I ever switch to vim, attempting to port paredit will be the first thing I do, and, if I fail, no switch. Well, that got long. Too bad the original poster on the newsgoup will never see this. [1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit [2] 'slurp' and 'barf' are the "official" terminologies, by the way