Moving to matching braces

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Tip: #6 - Moving to matching braces

Created: February 24, 2001 17:59 Complexity: basic Author: Yegappan Version: 5.7 Karma: 290/104 Imported from: Tip#6

The % key can be used

1. To jump to a matching opening or closing parenthesis, square bracket or a curly brace i.e. ([{}])
2. To jump to start or end of a C-style comment /* */.
3. To jump to a matching #if, #ifdef, #else, #elif, #endif C preprocessor conditionals.

To get more information about this, use the commands:

:help %

The % key can be extended to support other matching pairs by modifying the "matchpairs" option. Read the help on

:help matchpairs

Comments

Also check out Benji Fisher's matchit.vim set of functions to give '%' type toggling for a multitude of language constructs, like: if,else,elseif,endif

http://sites.netscape.net/BBenjiF/vim

Anonymous, February 28, 2001 11:00

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I also find very useful the following map:

noremap % v%

This way, whenever you type "%" you jump to the matching object AND you visually select all the text in between. It's useful f.i. for indenting a C or C++ method/class: go to opening/closing {/}, hit % and then hit = That's it!

lacaprara--AT--pd.infn.it, April 12, 2001 9:52

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The matchit script mentioned in the first note is now a plugin, and it is included in the macros/ directory of the standard distribution of vim 6.x. See

:help add-local-help

for installation details.

benji--AT--member.AMS.org, May 7, 2002 8:16

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the link to the matchit script apparently is no longer valid -- neither IE nor Netscape can find the server. Is there a newer link for those of us whose institutions (Univ. of Michigan....) are still stuck on v5.7?

thanks

vimonline--AT--dangercat.net, September 21, 2002 15:53

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If you are stuck with vim 5.7, you can use matchit.vim 1.0, available from the scripts section of this site: http://www.vim.org/script.php?script_id=39

benji--AT--member.AMS.org, December 5, 2002 11:05

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Don't forget 'showmatch', it can reduce the need for %. I like to speed things up a bit so I also set 'matchtime'. In .vimrc:

:set showmatch 
:set matchtime=3

Anonymous, December 14, 2003 17:40

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it seems % cannot cope up with commented {}. so if, i have following

something {

// something commented {

} //end

pressing % on "end" brace will match "something commented" than "something".

anybody knows a workout for that?

kumarpindia--AT--yahoo.com, June 1, 2005 2:04

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Well, you can either make a script or put a 'fixme: }' comment... like:

something {

// something commented {

//FIXME: }

} //end

FIXME will always be highlighted, so it will be harder to forget about it...

Anonymous, July 1, 2005 15:51

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> it seems % cannot cope up with commented {}. so if, i have following > > something { > // something commented { > } //end > > pressing % on "end" brace will match "something commented" than "something". > > anybody knows a workout for that?

I'm facing the same problem as well, my solution for it is for always use matchit.vim for my code. even java.

Basically in my C:/Program Files/Vim/vim70/ftplugin/java.vim I appended the following line

if exists("loaded_matchit") && !exists("b:match_words")

let b:match_ignorecase = 0

"let s:notelse= '\%(\<else\s\+\)\--AT--<!'

let s:notelse= '\(\<else\)\--AT--<!'

let b:match_words = s:notelse. '\<if\>:\<else\s\+if\>\|\<else\>,{:},(:),try:catch'

endif

it seems to work alright for me. it is just something quick I came up with, hope it work for you too.

pekcheey--AT--gmail.com, May 24, 2006 22:27

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