How can I color parentheses depending on the nesting level (like emacs' rainbow-delimiters)?

Question

Is it possible to have a custom setup for lstlistings for LISP-like languages and have matching parentheses coloured with a same colour taken from a palette?

What I am looking for is something like the minor mode rainbow-delimiters for Emacs, have a look at here:

Suppose you have a palette of 5 colours, then nested parentheses will be coloured by looping through this palette, having 5 alternating colors in the same order.

UPDATE I am providing a little MWE, just showing some listings settings for a lisp-like language (namely CLIPS), I do not know where to begin with colored parentheses.

\documentclass{report}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\definecolor{color_1}{RGB}{247, 247, 247}
\definecolor{color_2}{RGB}{186, 33, 33}
\definecolor{color_3}{RGB}{0, 128, 0}
\definecolor{color_4}{RGB}{64, 128, 128}
\definecolor{color_5}{RGB}{170, 34, 255}

\lstdefinelanguage{clips}
{
  morekeywords ={deffunction, deftemplate, defrule, deffacts, run,
    clear, reset, facts, agenda, nil, initial-fact, assert, retract,
    watch, ppdefrule, unwatch, crlf},
  sensitive=true,
  morecomment=[l]{;},
   morestring=[b]",
  basicstyle=\ttfamily\small,
  numbers=left,
  numberstyle=\tiny,
}

\lstnewenvironment{clips-code}
{\lstset{language=clips, 
  }}
{}

\begin{document}

\begin{clips-code}
  (deffunction (a b)
  ``Simple function''
  (if (< a b)
      then (printout t a)
      else (printout t b)))
\end{clips-code}

\end{document}

Answer 1

The listings package itself doesn't offer this feature; you need to hack at it a bit.

I won't elaborate much here, as I've left comments in my code, but the basic idea is to use a counter to keep track of the nesting level, and typeset each parenthesis in a colour corresponding to the current value of that counter (modulo 5, in your case).

I used a similar approach in my matlab-prettifier package, in order to properly highlight MATLAB's context-sensitive end keyword.

References

• egreg's answer to How do I calculate n modulo 3 in LaTeX?
• Ulrike Fischer's answer to Listings literate option breaks identifiers

Screenshot

Code

\documentclass{report}

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\definecolor{color0}{RGB}{147, 147, 147} %<--- I've changed this to make it more visible
\definecolor{color1}{RGB}{186, 033, 033}
\definecolor{color2}{RGB}{000, 128, 000}
\definecolor{color3}{RGB}{064, 128, 128}
\definecolor{color4}{RGB}{170, 034, 255}

\lstdefinelanguage{clips}{
  morekeywords = {deffunction, deftemplate, defrule, deffacts, run,
    clear, reset, facts, agenda, nil, initial-fact, assert, retract,
    watch, ppdefrule, unwatch, crlf},
  sensitive        = true,
  morecomment      = [l]{;},
  morestring       = [b]",
  basicstyle       = \ttfamily\small,
  numbers          = left,
  numberstyle      = \tiny,
  showstringspaces = false,
}

% egreg's modulo macro (see https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/34449/21891)
\def\truncdiv#1#2{((#1-(#2-1)/2)/#2)}
\def\moduloop#1#2{(#1-\truncdiv{#1}{#2}*#2)}
\def\modulo#1#2{\number\numexpr\moduloop{#1}{#2}\relax}


\makeatletter

% a TeX counter to keep track of the nesting level
\newcount\netParensCount@clisp

% Modify how ( and ) get typeset depending on the value of the counter
% (Based on Ulrike Fischer's approach to modifying characters in listings;
% see https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/231927/21891)
\lst@CCPutMacro
\lst@ProcessOther{`(}{{%
  \ifnum\lst@mode=\lst@Pmode\relax%
    \rainbow@clisp{(}%
    \global\advance\netParensCount@clisp by \@ne%
  \else
    (%
  \fi
}}%
\lst@ProcessOther{`)}{{%
  \ifnum\lst@mode=\lst@Pmode\relax%
    \global\advance\netParensCount@clisp by \m@ne%
    \rainbow@clisp{)}%
  \else
    )%
  \fi
}}%
\@empty\z@\@empty

% Color its argument based on the value of the \netParensCount@clisp counter
% (modulo 5)
\newcommand\rainbow@clisp[1]{%
  \ifcase\modulo\netParensCount@clisp 5\relax%
    \textcolor{color0}{#1}%
  \or
    \textcolor{color1}{#1}%
  \or
    \textcolor{color2}{#1}%
  \or
    \textcolor{color3}{#1}%
  \else
    \textcolor{color4}{#1}%
  \fi
}

% Alternatively, you could simplify the definition of \rainbow@clisp to...
% \newcommand\rainbow@clisp[1]{%
%   \textcolor{color\modulo\netParensCount@clisp 5}{#1}%
% }
% ... but this assumes that the colours have names of the form color<i>,
% where <i> is a positive integer

% reset the counter at the beginning of each listing
% (just in case there were unmatched parentheses in a previous listing)
\lst@AddToHook{PreInit}{%
  \global\netParensCount@clisp 0\relax%
}

\makeatother


\lstnewenvironment{clips-code}
  {\lstset{language=clips}}
  {}


\begin{document}

\begin{clips-code}
  (def function (a b)
  ``Simple function''
  (if (< a b)
      then (printout t a)
      else (printout t b)))
\end{clips-code}

\begin{clips-code}
  (define (collatz n)
    " generate the Collatz sequence (for N until it ends in 1)"
    (if (n n 1)
        '(1) ;; stop
        (cons n
            (if (= (modulo n 2) 0)
                (collatz (/ n 2))
                (collatz (1+ (* 3 n)))))))
\end{clips-code}

\end{document}