Automatically insert parenthesis around region without keybinding

Question

Is there a way to automatically insert parenthesis (or other s-expressions) around a highlighted region by only typing (, {, ", etc.? I don't want to have to use a key bind (M-() for that. It's a common feature in modern text editors like VSCode, so I'm wondering if there is a way to do it in emacs.

Edit: I have delete-selection-mode on, but in general I want this behavior to trump all others. So if a region is selected, no matter if delete-selection-mode is on or off, typing the start symbol of an s-expression would wrap the region in the s-expression. I also just realized that electric-pair-mode includes this feature. But I don't want the other features of electric-pair-mode, namely that it inserts a pair whenever you type the starting pair, no matter if a region is selected.

Answer 1

Electric pair mode is the closest built-in feature to what you're looking for. It inserts both an opening and a closing parentheses when you type one, with customizations to sometimes only insert what you type if there is already a matching unbalanced parenthesis. If the region is active, the parentheses are inserted around the region, even if Delete selection mode is active.

It doesn't appear to have an option to only trigger when the region is active. You can disable the insertion of the matching parenthesis when the region is inactive with a few lines of code, advising the function that is called (via post-self-insert-hook) after typing a character when Electric pair mode is active.

(electric-pair-mode)
(defun only-if-use-region (func &rest args)
  (if (use-region-p)
      (apply func args)))
(advice-add 'electric-pair-post-self-insert-function :around 'only-if-use-region)