Table of Contents

• About
  • Sublime Text 3 Support?
  • Overview
• Feature List
• General Use
  • Built-in Supported brackets
  • Additional Features
  • Bracket Plugin
  • Shortcuts
• Customizing BracketHighligher
  • Configuring Brackets
  • Configuring Highlight Style
• Bracket Plugin API
  • 'Defintion' Plugins
  • Run Instance Plugins
• Credits
• Changelog

About

This is a fork of pyparadigm's SublimeBrackets and SublimeTagmatcher (both are no longer available). I forked this to fix some issues I had and to add some features I wanted. I also wanted to improve the efficiency of the matching. This cuts down on the parallel searching that is now streamlined in one search. Since then, I have rewritten the entire code base to bring more flexibility, speed, and features.

Sublime Text 3 Support?

ST3 support is found here (at the present time): https://github.com/facelessuser/BracketHighlighter/tree/BH2ST3

Overview

Bracket Highlighter matches a variety of brackets such as: [], (), {}, "", '', <tag></tag>, and even custom brackets.

Feature List

• Customizable to highlight almost any bracket
• Customizable bracket highlight style
• High visibility bracket highlight mode
• Selectively disable or enable specific matching of tags, brackets, or quotes
• Selectively whitelist or blacklist matching of specific tags, brackets, or quotes based on language
• When bound to a shortcut, allow option to show line count and char count between match in the status bar
• Highlight basic brackets within strings
• Works with multi-select
• Configurable custom gutter icons
• Toggle bracket escape mode for string brackets (regex|string)
• Bracket plugins that can jump between bracket ends, select content, remove brackets and/or content, wrap selectios with brackets, swap brackets, swap quotes (handling quote escaping between the main quotes), fold/unfold conent between brackets, toggle through tag attribute selecection, select both the opening and closing tag name to change both simultaneously.

General Use

In general BracketHighligher (BH) will automatically highlight brackets (or defined bracket like start and end blocks) its between. By default, BH will but opening and closing icons in the gutter of the corresponding line containing open or closising bracket. BH, by default, will underline the closing and opening bracket as well.

Built-in Supported brackets

Currently BH supports the following brackets out of the box:

• round
• square
• curly
• angle
• single and double quotes
• python single and double quotes (unicode and raw)
• python tripple single and double quotes (unicode and raw)
• Javascript regex
• Perl regex
• Ruby regex
• Markdown italic
• Markdown bold
• CSSedit groups
• Ruby conditional statements
• C/C++ compiler switches
• PHP conditional keywords
• Erlang conditional statements
• HTML/ColdFusion/XML tags

BH also supports highlighting basic sub brackets (), [], {} within supported regex and strings.

Additional Features

BH has a couple of additonal features built-in.

Toggle Global Enable (bh_toggle_enable)

This command enables and disables BH globally

Toggle String Bracket Escape Mode (bh_toggle_string_escape_mode)

This toggles BH's recognition mode of escaped sub brackets in strings and regex. The modes are string escape mode and regex escape mode.

Settings

When changing settings, you should copy the entire bh_core.sublime-settings to your User folder before changing. Style and color will be discussed in greater depth in the Configuring Highlight Style section.

These are the basic settings you can change:

    //Debug logging
    "debug_enable": false,

    // When only either the left or right bracket can be found
    // this defines if the unmatched bracket should be shown.
    "show_unmatched" : true,

    // High visibilty style and color for high visibility mode
    // (solid|outline|underline)
    "high_visibility_style": "outline",
    // (scope|__default__|__bracket__)
    "high_visibility_color": "__bracket__",

    // Match brackets only when the cursor is touching the inside of the bracket
    "match_only_adjacent": false,

    // Character threshold to search
    "search_threshold": 5000,

    // Set mode for string escapes to ignore (regex|string)
    "bracket_string_escape_mode": "string",

    // Set max number of multi-select brackets that will be searched automatically
    "auto_selection_threshold" : 10,

    // Disable gutter icons when doing multi-select
    "no_multi_select_icons": false,

Bracket Plugins

Bh is also extendable via plugins and provides an number of plugins by default. See Bracket Plugins to learn more about the included plugins.

Bracket Plugin

BH provides a number of built in Bracket Plugins that take advantage of BH's matching to provide additional features. Most plugin features are available via the Tools->Packages->BracketHighlighter menu or the command palette. To see how to configure shortcuts, see the Example.sublime-settings file.

Bracket Select Plugin

This plugin changes the selection inside between the brackets. It can select the content or move the bracket to the opening and closing bracket. Behavior is slightly modified for tags.

Bracket Remove Plugin

Removes the surrounding brackets.

Fold Bracket Plugin

Folds the content of the current surrounding brackets.

Swap Quotes Plugin

Swap the quotes style of surrounding quotes from double to single or vice versa. It also handles escaping and unescaping of sub quotes.

Tag Plugin

Plugin used to help highlight tags.

Additional tag settings found in bh_core.sublime-settings:

    /* Plugin settings */

    // Style to use for matched tags
    "tag_style": "tag",

    // Scopes to exclude from tag searches
    "tag_scope_exclude": ["string", "comment"],

    // Determine which style of tag-matching to use in which syntax
    "tag_mode": {
        "xhtml": ["XML"],
        "html": ["HTML", "HTML 5", "PHP"],
        "cfml": ["HTML+CFML", "ColdFusion", "ColdFusionCFC"]
    }

Tag Attribute Select Plugin

Cycle through selecting tag attributes of tags.

Tag Name Select Plugin

Select the opening and closing tag name of current tag.

Bracket Wrapping Plugin

Wrap the current selection with supported bracket of your choice. Wrapping definitions are configured in bh_wrapping.sublime-settings.

Bracket Swapping Plugin

Swap the current surrounding bracket with supported bracket of your choice. Swapping definitions are configured in bh_swapping.sublime-settings.

Shortcuts

By default BH provides no shortcuts to avoid shortcut conflicts, but you can view the included Example.sublime-keymaps file to get an idea how to set up your own.

Customizing BracketHighligher

BH is extremely flexible and be customized and extended to fit a User's needs. The first step is to copy the bh_core.sublime-settings to your User folder.

Configuring Brackets

BH has been written to allow users to define any brackets they would like to have highlighted. There are two kinds of brackets you can define scope_brackets (search file for scope regions and then use regex to test for opening and closing brackets) and brackets (use regex to find opening and closing brackets). bracket type should usually be the preferred type. scope_brackets are usually used for brackets whose opening and closing are the same and not distinguishable form one another by regex; scope brackets must be contained in a continuous scope region like string for quotes etc.

Configuring Brackets

Brackets are defined under brackets in bh_core.sublime-settings.

Angle and Curly bracket will be used as an eample (not all options may be shown in these examples):

        {
            "name": "angle",
            "open": "(<)",
            "close": "(>)",
            "style": "angle",
            "scope_exclude": ["string", "comment", "keyword.operator"],
            "language_filter": "whitelist",
            "language_list": ["HTML", "HTML 5", "XML", "PHP", "HTML+CFML", "ColdFusion", "ColdFusionCFC"],
            "plugin_library": "bh_modules.tags",
            "enabled": true
        },
        {
            "name": "curly",
            "open": "(\\{)",
            "close": "(\\})",
            "style": "curly",
            "scope_exclude": ["string", "comment"],
            "scope_exclude_exceptions": ["string.other.math.block.environment.latex"],
            "language_filter": "blacklist",
            "language_list": ["Plain text"],
            "find_in_sub_search": "true",
            "ignore_string_escape": true,
            "enabled": true
        },

• name: the name of the bracket (should be unique)
• open: defines the opening bracket (one and only one captureing group must be present)
• close: defines the closing bracket (one and only one captureing group must be present)
• style: Name of style definition to be used to highlight the brackets. See Configuring Bracket Styles for more info.
• scope_exclude: Scopes where the opening and closing brackets should be ignored.
• language_filter: This works in conjunction with language_list. It specifies whether language_list is a blacklist or whitelist.
• language_list: an array of tmLanguage file names that should be avoided or included for highlighting. Looks to language_filter to determine if avoidance or inclusion is used.
• enabled: disable or enable rule
• scope_exclude_exceptions (optional)*: used to ignore exluding of sub scopes such as in the curly example above where string is excluded, but not string.other.math.block.environment.latex.
• plugin_library (optional): defines plugin to use for determining matches (see Bracket Plugin API for more info on matching plugins)
• find_in_sub_search (optional): this rule should be included when doing sub bracket matching in scope_brackets (like finding round brackets between quotes etc.). The setting must be as string and can be either (true|false|only); only means this bracket is only matched as a sub bracket of a scope_bracket.
• ignore_string_escape (optional): Do not ignore sub brackets found in strings and regex when escaped, but use internal escape logic to determine if the brackets should be ignored based on whether regex or string escape mode is set.

Configuring Scope Brackets

Scope Brackets are defined under scope_brackets in bh_core.sublime-settings.

Python Single Quote bracket will be used as an eample (not all options are shown in this example):

        {
            "name": "py_single_quote",
            "open": "u?r?((?:'')?')",
            "close": "((?:'')?')",
            "style": "single_quote",
            "scopes": ["string"],
            "language_filter": "whitelist",
            "language_list": ["Python"],
            "sub_bracket_search": "true",
            "enabled": true
        },

• name: the name of the bracket (should be unique)
• open: defines the opening bracket (one and only one captureing group must be present)
• close: defines the closing bracket (one and only one captureing group must be present)
• style: Name of style definition to be used to highlight the brackets. See Configuring Bracket Styles for more info.
• scopes: scope that should be searched to find the opening and closing brackets.
• language_filter: This works in conjunction with language_list. It specifies whether language_list is a blacklist or whitelist.
• language_list: an array of tmLanguage file names that should be avoided or included for highlighting. Looks to language_filter to determine if avoidance or inclusion is used.
• sub_bracket_search: should this scope bracket also search for sub brackets (like curly brackets in strings etc.).
• enabled: disable or enable rule
• plugin_library (optional): defines plugin to use for determining matches (see Bracket Plugin API for more info on matching plugins)

Configuring Highlight Style

Each bracket definition (described in Configuring Scope Brackets and Configuring Brackets) has a style setting that you give a style definition to. Style definitions are defined under bracket_styles in bh_core.sublime-settings.

There are two special style definitions whose names are reserved: default and unmatched, but you can configure them. All other custom style definitions follow the same pattern (see curly below and compare to the special style defintions; format is the same) All custom styles follow this pattern. See description below:

        // "default" style defines attributes that
        // will be used for any style that does not
        // explicitly define that attribute.  So if
        // a style does not define a color, it will
        // use the color from the "default" style.
        "default": {
            "icon": "dot",
            "color": "brackethighlighter.default",
            "style": "underline"
        },

        // This particular style is used to highlight
        // unmatched bracekt pairs.  It is a special
        // style.
        "unmatched": {
            "icon": "question",
            // "color": "brackethighlighter.unmatched",
            "style": "outline"
        },
        // User defined region styles
        "curly": {
            "icon": "curly_bracket"
            // "color": "brackethighlighter.curly",
            // "style": "underline"
        },

• icon: icon to show in gutter. Available options are (angle|round|curly|square|tag|star|dot|bookmark|question|quote|double_quote|single_quote|single_quote_offset| double_quote_offset|none)
• color: scope to define color
• style: higlight style. Available options are (solid|outline|underline|none)

As shown in the example above, if an option is omitted, it will use the setting in default. So curly, in this example, defines icon, but will use default for the color and style.

To customize the color for curly you can create your own custom scope.

Add this to your color scheme:

        <dict>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>Bracket Curly</string>
            <key>scope</key>
            <string>brackethighlighter.curly</string>
            <key>settings</key>
            <dict>
                <key>foreground</key>
                <string>#CC99CC</string>
            </dict>
        </dict>

And then use the scope:

        "curly": {
            "icon": "curly_bracket"
            "color": "brackethighlighter.curly",
            // "style": "underline"
        },

Bracket Plugin API

There are two kinds of plugins that can be written definition plugins (plugins attached to bracket definitions via the plugin_library option) or run instance plugins (plugins that are that are fed in the BracketHighligher via the command parameter plugin).

Bracket plugins use BracketRegions. BracketRegions are simple objects containing a begin pt and end pt of a bracket.

Class:

• BracketRegion(begin_pt, end_pt)

Attributes of BracketRegion:

• begin: the start pt of the BracketRegion
• end: the end pt of the BracketRegion

Methods of BracketRegion:

• size(): returns size of region
• move(begin_pt, end_pt): returns a new BracketRegion object with the points moved as specified by the parameters
• toregion: returns a sublime Region() object

'Defintion' Plugins

These are plugins that are attached to the bracket definition and aid in processing the brackets. These kids of plugins have two methods you can provide post_match and/or compare.

compare

compare is run when comparing the opening bracket with closing brackets. This allows you to provide logic to accept or regect a the pairing of an opening bracket with a closing bracket. You should not change the text in the view during this operation.

The compare method receives the following paramters:

• name: the name of the bracket definition being evaluated
• first: a bracket region for the opening bracket
• second: a bracket region for the closing bracket
• bfr: the file buffer

Returns:

• Boolean: indicating whether the the comparison yields a suitable match

Example (from phphekywords.py):

def compare(name, first, second, bfr):
    return "end" + bfr[first.begin:first.end].lower() == bfr[second.begin:second.end].lower()

post_match

post_match is run after the brackets have been matched. You can do things like alter the highlighting region and change the bracket_style if needed. You should not change the text in the view during this operation.

The post_match method receives the following parameters:

• name: the name of the bracket definition being evaluated
• style: the style definition name that is to be used to highlight the region
• first: a bracket region for the opening bracket
• second: a bracket region for the closing bracket
• center: position (pt) of cursor (in retrospect, probably not the most intuitive name; not sure why I named it such)
• bfr: the file buffer
• threshold: the calculated search window of the buffer that is being searched

Returns:

• BracketRegion: opening bracket region
• BracketRegion: closing bracekt region
• style: the name of the style definition to use

Example (from rubykeywords.py):

import re


def post_match(view, name, style, first, second, center, bfr, threshold):
    if first is not None:
        # Strip whitespace from the beginning of first bracket
        open_bracket = bfr[first.begin:first.end]
        if open_bracket != "do":
            m = re.match(r"^(\s*\b)[\w\W]*", open_bracket)
            if m:
                first = first.move(first.begin + m.end(1), first.end)
    return first, second, style

Example (snippet from tags.py)

def post_match(view, name, style, first, second, center, bfr, threshold):
    left, right = first, second
    threshold = [0, len(bfr)] if threshold is None else threshold
    tag_settings = sublime.load_settings("bh_core.sublime-settings")
    tag_mode = get_tag_mode(view, tag_settings.get("tag_mode", {}))
    tag_style = tag_settings.get("tag_style", "angle")
    bracket_style = style

    if first is not None and tag_mode is not None:
        matcher = TagMatch(view, bfr, threshold, first, second, center, tag_mode)
        left, right = matcher.match()
        if not matcher.no_tag:
            bracket_style = tag_style

    return left, right, bracket_style

Run Instance Plugins

Run instance plugins are fed into the command executing a BracketHighlighter match via the plugin parameter.

Example of run instance plugin getting called:

// Go to left bracket
    {
        "caption": "BracketHighlighter: Jump to Left Bracket",
        "command": "bh_key",
        "args":
        {
            "lines" : true,
            "plugin":
            {
                "type": ["__all__"],
                "command": "bh_modules.bracketselect",
                "args": {"select": "left"}
            }
        }
    },

The plugin paramter is a dictionary that contains 3 parameters to define what plugin should get run, with what arguments, and on what bracket defintion.

• type: an array containing the bracket definition names that the plugin should be run on. Use __all__ for all bracket definitions.
• command: the plugin to run. For internal plugins, they are referenced by bh_modules.<plugin name>. For custom plugins, you should use the folder path releative to Packages. So if I had a plugin called myplugin.py in my User folder, I would use User.myplugin.
• args: a dictionary contianing the arguments to feed into the plugin.

You create run instance plugins by deriving a class from the BracketPluginCommand class. Then you provide a method called plugin that returns the class.

Class:

• BracketPluginCommand()

Parameters of BracketPluginCommand:

• edit: sublime edit object
• name: name of tag definition being evaluated

Attributes of BracketPluginCommand:

• view: the sublime view containg the bracket (don't change this)
• left: a bracket region for the opening bracket (can be changed)
• right: a bracket region for the closing bracket (can be changed)
• selection: an array containing the selection that triggered the match (can be changed)

Methods of BracketPluginCommand:

• run(edit, name, ): (edit is a sublime edit object and name is the bracket definition being evaluated)

Example (from foldbracket.py):

import BracketHighlighter.bh_plugin as bh_plugin
import sublime


class FoldBrackets(bh_plugin.BracketPluginCommand):
    def run(self, edit, name):
        content = sublime.Region(self.left.end, self.right.begin)
        new_content = [content]
        if content.size() > 0:
            if self.view.fold(content) == False:
                new_content = self.view.unfold(content)
        self.selection = new_content


def plugin():
    return FoldBrackets

Credits

• pyparadigm: for his original efforts with SublimeBrackets and SublimeTagmatcher which originally BracketHighlighter was built off of and the inspiration behind the current implementation.
• BoundInCode: for his Tag icon

Changelog

Version 2.0.0

• Re-write of BracketHighlighter

Older Versions

• See Complete Changelog