• About
  • Sublime Text 3 Support?
  • Sublime Text 2 Support?
  • Overview
• Installation
• Issues
• Pull Requests
• Feature List
• General Use
  • Built-in Supported brackets
  • Additional Features
  • Bracket Plugin
  • Shortcuts
• Customizing BracketHighlighter
  • Configuring Brackets
    • Configuring Brackets Rules
    • Configuring Scope Brackets Rules
    • Bracket Rule Management
  • Configuring Highlight Style
• Bracket Plugin API
  • 'Definition' Plugins
  • Run Instance Plugins
• Credits
• Changelog

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.

ST3 support is found here: https://github.com/facelessuser/BracketHighlighter/tree/ST3. All current development is being done on ST3.

ST2 support is found here: https://github.com/facelessuser/BracketHighlighter/tree/ST2, but development has been halted on ST2

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

The recommended installation method is via Package Control. Learn more here: https://sublime.wbond.net/.

When filing issues, please state the OS and sublime version along with a detailed description of the problem including how to reproduce the issue. Only ST3 issues will be addressed.

Pull requests must be done against the main branch. When I am ready, the main branch will be merged into the relevant supported branch. For ST2 only rule defintions will be accepted for pull requests. But ST2 pull requests must be done against the ST2 branch and the relevant matching changes must be made to the main as well to keep the rules up to date on both branches. ST2 pull requests will only be accepted if the main branch and the ST2 branch are pulled in order to save me work. I will not back port rules ST2, but I will allow the community to do so.

• 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 selections with brackets, swap brackets, swap quotes (handling quote escaping between the main quotes), fold/unfold content between brackets, toggle through tag attribute selection, select both the opening and closing tag name to change both simultaneously.

In general, BracketHighlighter (BH) will highlight brackets (or defined bracket like start and end blocks) surrounding the cursor. By default, BH will put opening and closing icons in the gutter of the corresponding line containing open or closing bracket. BH, by default, will underline the closing and opening bracket as well.

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 triple 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
• Bash conditional and looping constructs

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

BH has a couple of additional features built-in.

This command enables and disables BH globally

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

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,

    // Do the opposite of "show_unmatched" for the languages listed below
    "show_unmatched_exceptions": [],

    // Enable high visibility by default when sublime starts up
    // If sublime is already running and this gets changed,
    // you will not see any changes (restart required to see change)
    "high_visibility_enabled_by_default": false,

    // Experimental: Creates a visible bar at the beginning of all lines between
    // multiline bracket spans.
    "content_highlight_bar": false,

    // Experimental: Align the content highlight bar at the bracket indent level
    "align_content_highlight_bar": false,

    // High visibility style and color for high visibility mode
    // (solid|outline|underline)
    // ST3 has additional options of (thin_underline|squiggly|stippled)
    "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,

    // Ignore threshold
    "ignore_threshold": false,

    // 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,

    // Enable this to completely kill highlighting if "auto_selection_threshold"
    // is exceeded.  Default is to highlight up to the "auto_selection_threshold".
    "kill_highlight_on_threshold": true,

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

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

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.

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.

Removes the surrounding brackets.

Folds the content of the current surrounding brackets.

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

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"]
    }

Cycle through selecting tag attributes of tags.

Select the opening and closing tag name of current tag.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Brackets can be modified or even added without copying the entire bracket rule lists to the user settings. See Bracket Rule Management for more info.

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

Brackets can be modified or even added without copying the entire bracket rule lists to the user settings. See Bracket Rule Management for more info.

Angle and Curly bracket will be used as an example (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 capturing group must be present)
• close: defines the closing bracket (one and only one capturing 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 excluding 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.

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

Brackets can be modified or even added without copying the entire bracket rule lists to the user settings. See Bracket Rule Management for more info.

Python Single Quote bracket will be used as an example (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 capturing group must be present)
• close: defines the closing bracket (one and only one capturing 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)

In the past, BracketHighlighter required a user to copy the entire bracket list to the user bh_core.sublime-settings file. This was a cumbersome requirement that also punished a user because if they did this, they wouldn't automatically get updates to the rules as all the rules were now overridden by the user's settings file.

BracketHighlighter now let's you add or modify existing rules without overriding the entire ruleset or even the entire target rule. Let's say you have a custom language you want to have on your machine. Now, you can simply add it to one of the two settings arrays: "user_scope_brackets" and "user_brackets":

    "user_scope_brackets": [],
    "user_brackets": [
        {
            "name": "mylang",
            "open": "^\\s*\\b(if|subr|bytemap|enum|command|for|while|macro|do)\\b",
            "close": "\\b(e(?:if|subr|bytemap|enum|command|for|while|macro)|until)\\b",
            "style": "default",
            "scope_exclude": ["string", "comment"],
            "plugin_library": "User.bh_modules.mylangkeywords",
            "language_filter": "whitelist",
            "language_list": ["mylang"],
            "enabled": true
        }
    ],

Let's say you want to modify an existing rule, maybe just tweak the language list, all you have to do is use the same name and the item you want to change. Only that attribute will be overridden:

    "user_brackets": [
        // Angle
        {
            "name": "angle",
            "language_list": [
                "HTML", "HTML 5", "XML", "PHP", "HTML (Rails)",
                "HTML (Jinja Templates)", "HTML (Twig)", "HTML+CFML",
                "ColdFusion", "ColdFusionCFC", "laravel-blade",
                "Handlebars", "AngularJS",
                "SomeNewLanguage" // <--- New language
            ]
        }
    ],

Let's say you want to insert a new rule between two rules. You can turn on debug mode and call the BracketHighlighter: (Debug) Filter Rules by Key then select position to see the current rule order and their postion index. To turn on Debug mode, just add "debug_enable": true to your user settings file.

Example of BracketHighlighter: (Debug) Filter Rules by Key output:

[
    [
        {"name": "curly", "position": 0},
        {"name": "round", "position": 1},
        {"name": "square", "position": 2},
        {"name": "html", "position": 3},
        {"name": "cfml", "position": 4},
        {"name": "php_angle", "position": 5},
        {"name": "angle", "position": 6},
        {"name": "cssedit_groups", "position": 7},
        {"name": "ruby_embedded_html", "position": 8},
        {"name": "ruby", "position": 9},
        {"name": "c_compile_switch", "position": 10},
        {"name": "php_keywords", "position": 11},
        {"name": "erlang", "position": 12},
        {"name": "bash", "position": 13},
        {"name": "fish", "position": 14},
        {"name": "mylang", "position": 15}
    ],
    [
        {"name": "py_single_quote", "position": 0},
        {"name": "py_double_quote", "position": 1},
        {"name": "single_quote", "position": 2},
        {"name": "double_quote", "position": 3},
        {"name": "jsregex", "position": 4},
        {"name": "perlregex", "position": 5},
        {"name": "rubyregex", "position": 6},
        {"name": "mditalic", "position": 7},
        {"name": "mdbold", "position": 8}
    ]
]

Then you can specify the position you want to insert at using the position key:

    "user_scope_brackets": [],
    "user_brackets": [
        {
            "name": "mylang",
            "position": 4, // <-- New position
            "open": "^\\s*\\b(if|subr|bytemap|enum|command|for|while|macro|do)\\b",
            "close": "\\b(e(?:if|subr|bytemap|enum|command|for|while|macro)|until)\\b",
            "style": "default",
            "scope_exclude": ["string", "comment"],
            "plugin_library": "User.bh_modules.mylangkeywords",
            "language_filter": "whitelist",
            "language_list": ["mylang"],
            "enabled": true
        }
    ],

And if you run the debug command again, you will see that the position has changed:

        {"name": "curly", "position": 0},
        {"name": "round", "position": 1},
        {"name": "square", "position": 2},
        {"name": "html", "position": 3},
        {"name": "trex", "position": 4}, // <-- New position
        {"name": "cfml", "position": 5},
        {"name": "php_angle", "position": 6},

This can be used to adjust the position of default rules from your user settings as well as shown by overrides above.

So, unless you are forking BH to pull request a change to the default rules, you can now modify the rules all in these two settings without copying or touching the default rules:

    "user_scope_brackets": [],
    "user_brackets": [],

This will allow you to make changes, but still receive new updated rules.

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 bracket 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"
        },
        "tag": {
            "icon": "tag",
            // "endpoints": true,
            // "color": "brackethighlighter.tag",
            "style": "outline"
        },

• 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. ST3 has additional styles: thin_underline, squiggly, stippled
• endpoint: boolean to highlight just the beginning and end of bracket. This is useful for things like tags where it may be distracting highlighting the entire tag.

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"
        },

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

These are plugins that are attached to the bracket definition and aid in processing the brackets. These kinds of plugins have three methods you can provide: post_match, compare, and/or validate.

validate before comparing it to its corresponding openning or closing side. This is used to determine perfrom additional validation on a found bracket. For example, lets say you have a bracket that is case senstive. BH uses a case insenstive search. With validate, you can ensure the orginally found bracket matches the desired case.

The validate method receives the following parameters:

• name: the name of the bracket definition being evaluated
• bracket: the bracket region being validated
• bracket_side: opening (0) or closing (1) bracket
• bfr: the file buffer

Returns:

• Boolean: indicates whether the validation succeeded (True) or failed (False)

Example: Should match closing tag end but not match End

case Foo of
    Guard1 -> ok;
    Guard2 -> End
end

Example (from erlangcase.py):

def validate(name, bracket, bracket_side, bfr):
    text = bfr[bracket.begin:bracket.end]
    return text.lower() == text

compare is run when comparing the opening bracket with closing brackets. This allows you to provide logic to accept or reject 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 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 bracket 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

highlighting is the last hook to get run. This is at a point when BH no longer cares about what the actual bracket region is, so it is safe to modify it for highlighting purposes. The view really shouldn't be modified here.

The highlighting method receives the following parameters:

• view: the current view containing brackets
• name: the name of the bracket definition being evaluated
• style: the style definition name that is to be used to highlight the region
• left: a bracket region for the opening bracket (could be None)
• right: a bracket region for the closing bracket (could be None)

Returns:

• BracketRegion: opening bracket region
• BracketRegion: closing bracket region

Example (snippet from tags.py)

def highlighting(view, name, style, left, right):
    """
    Highlight only the tag name.
    """
    if style == "tag":
        tag_name = '[\w\:\.\-]+'
        if left is not None:
            region = view.find(tag_name, left.begin)
            left = left.move(region.begin(), region.end())
        if right is not None:
            region = view.find(tag_name, right.begin)
            right = right.move(region.begin(), region.end())
    return left, right

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 definition.

• 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 relative to Packages. So if I had a plugin called myplugin.py in my User folder, I would use User.myplugin.
• args: a dictionary containing 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 containing 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, <args>): (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

• 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