Tim Teitelbaum, one of the first researchers on IDEs summarized problems like this in a quote from one of his papers.
"Programs are not text; they are hierarchical compositions of computational structures and should be edited, executed, and debugged in an environment that consistently acknowledges and reinforces this viewpoint."
It is unfortunate that most major code editors and IDEs today do not store units of code (like Lisp SEXPs) as databases to be updated as you edit, which would make problems like this or other operations like metaprogramming, formal analysis, or documentation much easier to solve.
"Programs are not text; they are hierarchical compositions of computational structures and should be edited, executed, and debugged in an environment that consistently acknowledges and reinforces this viewpoint."
It is unfortunate that most major code editors and IDEs today do not store units of code (like Lisp SEXPs) as databases to be updated as you edit, which would make problems like this or other operations like metaprogramming, formal analysis, or documentation much easier to solve.