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(emacs)Moving by Parens

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Moving in the Parenthesis Structure
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   The Emacs commands for handling parenthetical groupings see nothing
except parentheses (or whatever characters must balance in the language
you are working with), and the escape characters that might be used to
quote those.  They are mainly intended for editing programs, but can be
useful for editing any text that has parentheses.  They are sometimes
called "list" commands because in Lisp these groupings are lists.

`C-M-n'
     Move forward over a parenthetical group (`forward-list').

`C-M-p'
     Move backward over a parenthetical group(`backward-list').

`C-M-u'
     Move up in parenthesis structure (`backward-up-list').

`C-M-d'
     Move down in parenthesis structure (`down-list').

   The "list" commands `C-M-n' (`forward-list') and `C-M-p'
(`backward-list') move over one (or N) parenthetical groupings,
skipping blithely over any amount of text that doesn't include
meaningful parentheses (symbols, strings, etc.).

   `C-M-n' and `C-M-p' try to stay at the same level in the parenthesis
structure.  To move _up_ one (or N) levels, use `C-M-u'
(`backward-up-list').  `C-M-u' moves backward up past one unmatched
opening delimiter.  A positive argument serves as a repeat count; a
negative argument reverses the direction of motion, so that the command
moves forward and up one or more levels.

   To move _down_ in the parenthesis structure, use `C-M-d'
(`down-list').  In Lisp mode, where `(' is the only opening delimiter,
this is nearly the same as searching for a `('.  An argument specifies
the number of levels to go down.