How to highlight current argument in SLIME

Question

I am using sbcl with GNU Emacs 24.3.1 and the 2012-04-14 release of SLIME, on Arch Linux to write some Common Lisp code. When writing an expression, if I type, for example

(if

the minibuffer will display

(if TEST THEN &OPTIONAL ELSE)

Is there a mode or SLIME setting that can make the argument that I'm currently editing be highlighted in the minibuffer? For example, if I type

(if (> x y)

it would be great if

(if TEST *THEN* &OPTIONAL ELSE)

or something similar was displayed in the minibuffer.

Which Emacs and SLIME versions do you use? In Lispbox under Windows it seems to work out of the box. — Alexey
Which documentation minor mode do you use? You can easily find that out by checkin the status line? There should be something like (Lisp ElDoc ...) or (Lisp Autodoc ...). — Alexey
@Alexey Added a few configuration details to the question. Regarding the documentation minor mode: I'm not using eldoc mode, and I don't think I have Lisp Autodoc installed (I did a C-h a for "autodoc" with no results). Also, here is what is displayed on my mode line - nothing regarding documentation: game.lisp 86% (115, 15) (Lisp [? sbcl]) — Daniel Neel
How's SLIME configured in your emacs setup? Do you have something like (slime-setup '(...))? — Alexey
@Alexey In my .emacs I have the following lines: (setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/bin/sbcl") (add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/slime-2012-04-14/") (require 'slime) (slime-setup) — Daniel Neel

Alexey Alexey · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-15T16:48:11

The strange thing is that you have documentation in minibuffer with this configuration. Maybe your distribution also loads it from a different location.

Please try this config:

(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/bin/sbcl")
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/slime-2012-04-14/")
(require 'slime)
(require 'slime-autoloads)
(slime-setup '(slime-autodoc))

It tells Emacs to load and use slime-autodoc module that displays documentation and in minibuffer and highlights it as you'd like it to be.

Maybe you'd also like to update to a more recent SLIME version (the current one in ELPA is 20130402).

How to highlight current argument in SLIME

1 Answers