Skip to content

Selecting forms

Most paredit edit and several paredit refactor commands operate on one selected expression. There are two selectors, and every report command that prints locations emits values you can pass straight back in.

Tree paths: --path

A path is a dot-separated list of zero-based child indexes, starting at the top level of the document. Given:

(defun foo (x)      ; top-level form 0
  (+ x 1))
(defvar *limit* 10) ; top-level form 1
  • --path 0 selects the whole defun.
  • --path 0.0 selects the atom defun.
  • --path 0.2 selects the parameter list (x).
  • --path 0.3 selects the body form (+ x 1).
  • --path 1.2 selects 10.

Paths count every child expression, including the head atom. Comments and whitespace are not children, so paths stay stable under reformatting.

Use --path when scripting deterministic edits: the same document always yields the same path.

Byte offsets: --at

--at <offset> selects the smallest expression containing the given byte offset. Use it when another tool — a grep hit, a compiler message column, or a previous paredit report — already gives you a byte position:

paredit edit select --file source.lisp --at 42

--path and --at are mutually exclusive; pass exactly one.

Getting paths and spans from reports

You never need to count parentheses by hand. These commands print paths and byte spans for everything they report:

# Top-level forms with paths, spans, and definition hints.
paredit inspect outline --file source.lisp --output json

# One form with its local structure (children, paths, spans).
paredit inspect form --file source.lisp --path 0 --include-source --output json

# Exact atom occurrences with spans, ready for --at.
paredit inspect find-symbol --file source.lisp --symbol foo --output json

# Everything at once, for agent planning.
paredit inspect agent-report --file source.lisp

A typical loop: run outline to find the top-level form, run form on that path to see its children, then pass the child path to the edit or refactor command.

Files and stdin

Single-document commands read --file when given and stdin otherwise. Dialect detection uses the file extension: .lisp/.lsp/.cl/.asd (Common Lisp), .el (Emacs Lisp), .lfe (LFE), .scm/.ss/.sld/.sls/ .sps (Scheme), .rkt/.rktl/.rktd (Racket), .clj/.cljc/.cljs/ .cljd/.edn/.bb (Clojure), .hy (Hy), .carp (Carp), .janet (Janet), and .fnl (Fennel). Pass --dialect explicitly for stdin input or unusual extensions where the command accepts it.

Report commands that take multiple files (symbols, calls, signature, …) require explicit file arguments, while workspace and the refactor workspace-* commands discover sources under directory roots.