Parinfer
Shares rank 15 of 24 Emacs packages by recommenders
Free editor plugin that matches Lisp parentheses from indentation, so you edit code without managing closing parens by hand.
Free editor plugin that matches Lisp parentheses from indentation, so you edit code without managing closing parens by hand.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Matches parens from indentation
“allows me to edit Janet as if it was an indentation-based language”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Why Janet?” “something like parinfer, which matches parens based on indentation”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “What makes Lisp difficult to read?” Avoids manual paren management
“Having to keep the source in the shape of a valid AST almost entirely manually is really annoying.”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “My thoughts after using Clojure for about a month” “parinfer shows it can be done mostly non-annoyingly at least for lisp”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “My thoughts after using Clojure for about a month”
Other Emacs packages people recommend
The four most recommended other Emacs packages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evil mode for Emacs | 39 | 7 | 85% | 11 | — | Approved |
| agent-shell | 25 | 6 | 81% | 11 | — | Approved |
| TRAMP for Emacs | 25 | 10 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| gptel | 20 | 1 | 95% | 12 | — | Approved |
| ParinferThis page | 8 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“something like parinfer, which matches parens based on indentation”
“I had no time for parinfer (paredit all the way, baby)”
“Paredit / Parinfer ruined other languages for me.”
“parinfer shows it can be done mostly non-annoyingly at least for lisp”
“Having to keep the source in the shape of a valid AST almost entirely manually is really annoying.”
“It lets you navigate up/down/in/out of the Clojure AST with keyboard commands”
“it's nice to have a better editor for it”
“allows me to edit Janet as if it was an indentation-based language”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.