Re: Insert character pairs

[Richard Stallman]

    > +      (let* (p (str (pp-to-string (save-excursion
    > +                                    (prog1 (read (current-buffer))
                                                    ^
    But this would also lead to all comments being removed , right?

Yes, it would.  So people would only want to use this in
special situations.

In the past, I think I've seen mechanisms that allow the Lisp
reader to remember where there were comments and associate the comments
with the surrounding code.  But that's a big job, not a simple
change like the one here proposed.