How to add / remove parenthesis around a marked region in Emacs?

Question

I often find it is needed to add / remove parenthesis / bracket around a marked region in Emacs.

Currently I do the adding manually by:

1. Move the cursor to one end of the intended region, type the opening deliminator;
2. Move the cursor to the other end of the intended region, type the closing deliminator;

And the removal in the other way around.

However, this seems cumbersome and error prone because of the movement of cursor. From a safety point of view, if I delete parenthesis in pairs, I feel safer, because it is an atomic operation

Is there a built-in or hand-crafted function in Emacs to do it with respect to marked region?

Answer 1

Removing a pair of surrounding characters (parens, brackets, whatever) with the delete-pair function: You don't have to mark the region.

• Before a pair: M-x delete-pair
• Inside a pair: C-M-u for backing out of the pair and then M-x delete-pair.
• Behind a pair: M-- (negative argument) and then M-x delete-pair

Enclosing a region with parens:

• Marking the region and M-(.