Re: catching parenthesis errors in elisp

[Joe Fineman <joe_f@verizon.net>]

I always enter parens in matching pairs.  Combined with the use of C-j
for new lines, which makes paren errors conspicuous thru wrong
indentation, that pretty much eliminates such errors in writing defuns
ab initio.

However, in *revising* defuns it is often necessary to insert & delete
parens singly, and that can lead to an insidious kind of error (I have
made it several times in the last few days): an extra paren at the end
of the defun.  That is indetectable thru indentation & does not
obstruct evaling it from within (C-M-x), but will cause an abort the
next time the .emacs or Commands.el file is loaded as a whole.  The
best preventive I have found is to put point after the final paren &
look for a match; but you have to remember to do it.
-- 
---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||:  Christians & Marxists think suffering must mean something.  :||