Smartparens

Table of Contents

• Smartparens
  • Getting Started
  • Usage
  • Contributing
    • Language Support
  • Supporting Smartparens
  • Related Projects

Smartparens is a minor mode for dealing with pairs in Emacs.

It can automatically insert pairs:

wrap, unwrap and rewrap pairs:

expand and contract pairs:

navigate pairs:

and much more!

Getting Started

We generally target GNU Emacs version 25 and newer, however, everything should work mostly fine on anything newer than version 24.

You can install smartparens from MELPA. Once installed, enable the default configuration:

(require 'smartparens-config)

You can now use smartparens with M-x smartparens-mode. To automatically enable smartparens in a programming mode:

;; Always start smartparens mode in js-mode.
(add-hook 'js-mode-hook #'smartparens-mode)

You may want to try smartparens-strict-mode. This enforces that pairs are always balanced, so commands like kill-line keep your code well-formed.

You can also use use-package to install and setup smartparens. An example config is:

(use-package smartparens
  :ensure smartparens  ;; install the package
  :hook (prog-mode text-mode markdown-mode) ;; add `smartparens-mode` to these hooks
  :config
  ;; load default config
  (require 'smartparens-config))

Usage

Inside Emacs, M-x sp-cheat-sheet will show you all the commands available, with examples.

There's also a great article demonstrating movement and editing in smartparens and extensive documentation in the wiki.

Contributing

We love pull requests. Please include tests. Smartparens uses ert-runner for testing. To run all the tests, run:

$ cask exec ert-runner

Alternatively, you can open the individual files in Emacs, then M-x eval-buffer M-x ert.

You can learn more about how we test on the testing wiki page.

Language Support

Smartparens has a default configuration that works well for most languages. For language-specific behaviour, smartparens has a separate smartparens-FOO.el file for every language and smartparens-config.el loads these automatically.

Supporting Smartparens

If you want to support this project, you can:

• Contribute code. If you have an idea that is not yet implemented and will benefit this project, feel free to implement it and submit a pull request. If you have any concerns whether your contribution will be accepted, ask beforehand. You can email the author or start an issue on the tracker.

• Contribute ideas. Even if you can't code Emacs Lisp, you can still contribute valuable ideas for other programmers to implement. Simply start new issue on the tracker and submit your suggestion.

• You can make a financial donation through PayPal or Patreon. If you like smartparens and can spare a modest amount on a donation, feel free to do so. These donations are expressions of your gratitude and are used for my personal "rewards" (books, games, music etc.). You can also gift me a game on Steam or buy something on Amazon. Regardless of the donations, smartparens will always be free both as in beer and as in speech.

Related Projects

Other Emacs projects that deal with pairs include:

• autopair
• wrap-region
• electric-pair-mode
• paredit

Smartparens aims to provide a superset of these features, in all programming languages.