Bracket matching, also known as brace matching or parentheses matching, is a
syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that is used for programming language, programming, scripting language, scripting, or markup language, markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in differe ...
feature of certain
text editor
A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...
s and
integrated development environment
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...
s that highlights matching sets of
bracket
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...
s (square brackets, curly brackets, or parentheses) in languages such as
Java
Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
,
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
Web browsers have ...
, and
C++ that use them. The purpose is to help the programmer navigate through the code and also spot any improper matching, which would cause the program to not compile or malfunction. If a closing bracket is left out, for instance, the compiler will not know that the end of a block of code has been reached. Bracket matching is particularly useful when many nested
''if'' statements,
program loop
In computer science, control flow (or flow of control) is the order in which individual statements, instructions or function calls of an imperative program are executed or evaluated. The emphasis on explicit control flow distinguishes an '' ...
s, etc. are involved.
Implementations
Vim's % command does bracket matching, and
NetBeans
NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java (programming language), Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows, ...
has bracket matching built-in.
Bracket matching can also be a tool for code navigation. In
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development ...
C++ 6.0, bracket matching behavior was set to ignore brackets found in comments. In VSC 7.0, its behavior was changed to compute commented brackets.
IntelliJ IDEA's
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pa ...
plugin also enables bracket matching. It has been proposed that
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language".
Perl was developed ...
5 be modified to facilitate bracket matching.
Brace-matching for Perl Regular Expressions – perl6
/ref> The Microsoft Excel 2003 formula bar has parentheses matching. Its implementation shows all the pairs of parentheses as different colors, so it is possible to easily analyze them all at once.
Example
In this example, the user has just typed the closing curly brace '}' defining a code block, and that brace and its corresponding opening brace are both highlighted.
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
│
See also
*
References
{{reflist
User interface techniques
Text editor features
pt:Realce de sintaxe#Parênteses correspondentes