**Q:** is there a general way to detect whether or not point is inside a matched pair of characters?

That is: is there a general predicate function (or something) that can determine if point is in-between a matched pair or some arbitrarily-chosen characters? I'm thinking about one that would evaluate to `t` in, say, the following scenarios, with `!` referring to point:

```
"!"   (quotes in general)
``!'' (LaTeX quotes)
$!$   (LaTeX math)
(!)   (lisp parens)
*!*   (org emphasis)

```

*Edit*: `syntax-ppss` seems to be a good starting point, but it's not clear to me how one would adapt it to multi-character matched pairs (eg, the ``LaTeX quotes'', or even matched `<b>html tags</b>`). I'm wondering if there's a general solution, or if it would require a purpose-built parser.