Remove extra braces

Question

I have some text like this

This is a {{text}} with { { {some {extra} unneeded {
{and ugly}} braces 
}}}.

Is there a way to remove the extra unneeded parenthesis so that the result is

This is a {text} with {some {extra} unneeded 
{and ugly} braces 
}.

Or something like this, up to whitespace. I use smartparens but I couldn't find anything there to resolve this (other than going through each extra pair and removing it).

Answer 1

I use sp-unwrap-sexp.

In your example, having

• sp-unwrap-sexp bind to M-Backspace
• sp-next-sexp bind to C-M-n
• sp-down-sexp bind to C-M-d

and a cursor in the beginning of the text, I do:

1. C-M-d to go to {text}
2. M-Backspace to remove outer {}
3. C-M-n 3 times to go to { { {some {extra} unneeded {
4. M-Backspace 2 times to get {some {extra} unneeded { of course matching braces } were also removed
5. C-M-d C-M-n C-M-n C-M-n to go to the last { on the first line
6. M-Backspace and we are done.

PS

Here is short demo: https://youtu.be/LJMPnIUXTW0

Answer 2

You can try using sp-raise-sexp.

From the documentation (C-h f sp-raise-sexp):

Unwrap the current list and kill everything inside except next expression.

For example, with this:

{{text}}

You can:

• place point/cursor on the second {
• M-x sp-raise-sexp

And you will get:

{text}