Tip: #630 - Automatically append closing characters
Created: January 2, 2004 Complexity: basic Author: Andrzej Cuber Version: 6.0 Karma: 107/40 Imported from: Tip#630
A simple solution
When you type an open brace, this will automatically insert a closing brace on the same line, after the cursor. If you quickly hit Enter after the open brace, (to begin a code block), the closing brace will be inserted on the line below the cursor. If you quickly press the open brace key again after the open brace, Vim won't insert anything extra, you'll just get a single open brace. Finally, if you quickly type an open and close brace, Vim will not do anything special.
:inoremap { {}<Left>
:inoremap {<CR> {<CR>}<Esc>O
:inoremap {{ {
:inoremap {} {}
Here are similar mappings for other "paired" characters: brackets and parentheses.
:inoremap [ []<Left>
:inoremap [<CR> [<CR>]<Esc>O
:inoremap [[ [
:inoremap [] []
:inoremap ( ()<Left>
:inoremap (<CR> (<CR>)<Esc>O
:inoremap (( (
:inoremap () ()
This one is useful for adding C-style comments. If you don't want it to take effect, type your mapleader character first (usually '\' – see :help mapleader).
:inoremap /* /**/<Left><Left>
:inoremap /*<Space> /*<Space><Space>*/<Left><Left><Left>
:inoremap /*<CR> /*<CR>*/<Esc>O
:inoremap <Leader>/* /*
Similar mappings might be useful for quotes, but they might get in your way depending on the type of file you're editing. Some languages use duplicate single-quotes a lot, and some pair the backtick with the quote. For these situations, you might want to put similar commands into language-specific files. For example, this quote-completer for GNU M4 might live in ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/m4.vim. :help after-directory
:inoremap ` `')<Left><Left>
:inoremap `<CR> `<CR>'<Esc>O
:inoremap `` `
:inoremap `' `'
More advanced solutions
If you want something more complex and configurable, there are a number of different scripts that accomplish this task.
Library plugins
Luc Hermitte has some very advanced and smart ftplugins for editing C & C++ files. Those scripts give advanced brace-handling features like markers support (placeholders in another terminology), several things can be easily tweaked (whether we want newlines or not before the curly-brackets, ...), the abbreviations are buffer-relative (which is necessary to have "for" expand into different things according to the filetype of the buffer edited), context-sensitive (the abbreviations are not expanded within comments or string contexts) and more. See also the core bracketing system and the C&C++ ftplugin suite, on vim.org, built on top of it.
Srinath Avadhanula's imaps.vim is used by Latex-Suite to provide a similar bracketing system.
ReplaceCurly script
This script operates only on braces, but is smarter about detecting when it should act. It will not take effect when editing comments, strings and lines containing the the word "new." (This is useful for array initialization, e.g. string[] myArray = new string[] {"a", "b"}.)
imap { <esc>:call ReplaceCurly()<cr>"_cl
function! ReplaceCurly()
imap { {
" only replace outside of comments or strings (which map to constant)
let elesyn = synIDtrans(synID(line("."), col(".") - 1, 0))
if elesyn != hlID('Comment') && elesyn != hlID('Constant') && match(getline("."), "\\<new\\>") < 0
exe "normal a{"
" need to add a spare character (x) to position the cursor afterwards
exe "normal ox"
exe "normal o}"
exe "normal kw"
else
" need to add a spare character (x) to position the cursor afterwards
exe "normal a{x"
endif
imap { <esc>:let word= ReplaceCurly()<cr>"_cl
endfunction
"Surround code with braces
nmap <leader>{} O{<esc>ddj>>ddkP
vmap <leader>{} <esc>o{<esc>ddgv>gvdp