Brace matching

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Brace matching, also known as bracket matching or parentheses matching, is a syntax highlighting feature of certain text editors and integrated development environments that highlights matching sets of braces (square brackets, curly brackets, or parentheses) in languages such as Java 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 brace is left out, for instance, the compiler will not know that the end of a block of code has been reached. Brace matching is particularly useful when many nested if statements, program loops, etc. are involved.

Syntax highlighting Tool of editors for programming, scripting and markup

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature facilitates writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and syntax errors are visually distinct. Highlighting does not affect the meaning of the text itself; it is intended only for human readers.

Text editor software to modify text documents

A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software, following the naming of Microsoft Notepad. Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to change files such as configuration files, documentation files and programming language source code.

Integrated development environment software application used to develop software

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. Some IDEs, such as NetBeans and Eclipse, contain the necessary compiler, interpreter, or both; others, such as SharpDevelop and Lazarus, do not. IDEs are sometimes called Program Development Environments (PDEs).

Contents

Implementations

Vim's % command does brace matching, [1] and NetBeans has brace matching built-in. [2] Brace matching can also be a tool for code navigation. In Visual Studio [3] C++ 6.0, brace matching behavior was set to ignore braces found in comments. In VSC 7.0, its behavior was changed to compute commented braces. [4] IntelliJ IDEA's Ruby on Rails plugin also enables braces matching. [5] It has been proposed that Perl 5 be modified to facilitate braces matching. [6] 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.

Vim (text editor) Improved version of the Vi keyboard-oriented text editor

Vim is a clone, with additions, of Bill Joy's vi text editor program for Unix. Vim's author, Bram Moolenaar, based it upon the source code for a port of the Stevie editor to the Amiga and released a version to the public in 1991. Vim is designed for use both from a command-line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim is free and open-source software and is released under a license that includes some charityware clauses, encouraging users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda. The license is compatible with the GNU General Public License through a special clause allowing distribution of modified copies "under the GNU GPL version 2 or any later version".

NetBeans An Integrated development environment software for software development.

NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called modules. NetBeans runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Solaris. In addition to Java development, it has extensions for other languages like PHP, C, C++, HTML5, and JavaScript. Applications based on NetBeans, including the NetBeans IDE, can be extended by third party developers.

Ruby on Rails open source web application framework

Ruby on Rails, or 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 pages. It encourages and facilitates the use of web standards such as JSON or XML for data transfer, HTML, CSS and JavaScript for user interfacing. In addition to MVC, Rails emphasizes the use of other well-known software engineering patterns and paradigms, including convention over configuration (CoC), don't repeat yourself (DRY), and the active record pattern.

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++) {     System.out.println(i); }│

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References

  1. ↑ Norm Matloff's Text-Editor Web Page for Programming Students
  2. ↑ "Overview (Editor Braces Matching)". Archived from the original on 2012-05-25. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  3. ↑ Automatic Brace Matching in Visual Studio
  4. ↑ Feedback: braces matching behavior
  5. ↑ "IntelliJ IDEA supports Ruby and Ruby on Rails | AjaxLine". Archived from the original on 2010-09-22. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  6. ↑ Brace-matching for Perl Regular Expressions - perl6
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