GNU ELPA - tex-parens

Emacs comes with the following useful commands for working with lists, sexps and defuns (see the info nodes Expressions and Defuns):

This package provides analogous commands adapted for tex buffers, with the class of parenthesis-like delimiters (namely, parentheses (), brackets [] and braces {}) expanded to include the following:

• \begin{...} - \end{...} pairs
• math environment delimiters $...$, \(...\), \[...\], $$...$$
• mathematical delimiters: parentheses, brackets, braces, \langle - \rangle, \lvert - \rvert, etc., and compositions of these with modifiers such as \left - \right, \Bigg, etc. See M-x customize-group tex-parens for details.

There is some support in this direction in the built-in tex-mode, in AUCTeX and in latex-extra. There are many packages, such as paredit and lispy, that add further useful commands and bindings to lisp modes, and many other packages, such as smartparens, puni and paredit-everywhere, that aim to give consistent parenthesis-based commands across all modes. There's also the evil-tex package for those that prefer a modal setup. I was unable to get these packages to behave in the desired manner. Smartparens comes close, but doesn't seem to support arbitrary begin/end pairs, and has some issues when one delimiter is a prefix of another (https://github.com/Fuco1/smartparens/issues/1193). This package should work out-of-the-box and behave in tex buffers just like stock Emacs does in lisp buffers.

Download this repository, install using M-x package-install-file (or package-vc-install, straight, elpaca, …), and add something like the following to your init file, adjusting the binds according to preference (and replacing LaTeX-mode with latex-mode or tex-mode or plain-tex-mode, whichever is appropriate, if you don't use AUCTeX):

(use-package tex-parens
  :bind
  (:map LaTeX-mode-map
	([remap forward-sexp] . tex-parens-forward-sexp)
	([remap backward-sexp] . tex-parens-backward-sexp)
	([remap forward-list] . tex-parens-forward-list)
	([remap backward-list] . tex-parens-backward-list)
	([remap backward-up-list] . tex-parens-backward-up-list)
	([remap up-list] . tex-parens-up-list)
	([remap down-list] . tex-parens-down-list)
	([remap delete-pair] . tex-parens-delete-pair)
	([remap mark-sexp] . tex-parens-mark-sexp)
	([remap kill-sexp] . tex-parens-kill-sexp)
	([remap transpose-sexps] . transpose-sexps)
	([remap backward-kill-sexp] . tex-parens-backward-kill-sexp)
	([remap raise-sexp] . tex-parens-raise-sexp))
  :hook
  (LaTeX-mode . tex-parens-setup))

With this setup, whatever binds you generally use for the indicated list commands will be forwarded to tex-parens in LaTeX-mode. If you want to specify the keys more directly, use instead something like the following:

(use-package tex-parens
  :bind
  (:map LaTeX-mode-map
	("C-M-f" . tex-parens-forward-sexp)
	("C-M-b" . tex-parens-backward-sexp)
	("C-M-n" . tex-parens-forward-list)
	("C-M-p" . tex-parens-backward-list)
	("C-M-u" . tex-parens-backward-up-list)
	("M-u" . tex-parens-up-list)
	("C-M-g" . tex-parens-down-list)
	("M-_" . tex-parens-delete-pair)
	("C-M-SPC" . tex-parens-mark-sexp)
	("C-M-k" . tex-parens-kill-sexp)
	("C-M-t" . transpose-sexps)
	("C-M-<backspace>" . tex-parens-backward-kill-sexp)
	("M-+" . tex-parens-raise-sexp))
  :hook
  (LaTeX-mode . tex-parens-setup))

The precise use-package declaration that I use may be found in the LaTeX part of my config (elpaca branch).

Use M-x customize-group tex-parens to configure further. If you tweak the customization variables concerning delimiters and modifiers, then you'll need to reload your tex file or M-: (tex-parens-setup) for the changes to take effect.

This package contains the additional functions tex-parens-burp-left, tex-parens-burp-right, tex-parens-mark-inner, tex-parens-beginning-of-list and tex-parens-end-of-list, which are defined in terms of the sexp/list primitives; see the C-h f documentation for details.