About this Visual Studio Code extension

This extension is for people that want a more "in the face" approach on highlighting content between symbols.
Symbols can be custom defined, the extension is not limited to only brackets. Sadly the extension name cannot be changed retroactively.
It provides a very configurable CSS style markup for the whole text between opening and closing symbols or only the symbols themselves.
There are preset options for all kinds of brackets.

Features

• Highlights pairs of symbols that are at the cursor or if the cursor is in the scope of the pair
• Symbols can be configured and support regular expressions
• Multiple cursors support
• Hotkey actions to jump to the highlight pairs
• Hotkey action to select all text between a highlight pair

Upgrade to version 3.0.0

• Please refer to the chapter quick setup if you want to quickly get started with basic symbol support
• Please refer to the chapter custom symbols for more information how the new syntax for highlight symbols looks like
• The extension will try to use symbols with the old syntax, but be aware that it is deprecated and might not work as you expect it to
• Some settings were removed, which means there are no more symbols available via checkboxes => All symbols must now be configured within custom symbols. You can find a minimal example in the minimal example chapter.

Decoration examples

Example	Description
	Change background color
	Blur everything not in scope
	Highlight symbols and content differently
	Highlight symbols and content the same
	Highlight only the symbols
	Multiple cursor support
	Change the way the text looks

• ... Lots of additional possibilities. Just configure it the way you like it.

Hotkey actions:

• Jump to/out of highlighted opening and closing symbols
• Jump to the corresponding symbol pair
• Select the text between highlighted symbols

Extension Settings

This extension contributes the following settings:

Refer to https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/ for all CSS options.
Refer to https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/identifiers for available language identifiers.
Refer to https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colors_legal.asp for possible color values. \

Hotkeys provided by extension

This extension provides several hotkeys to work with highlighted symbols and ranges.

Quick setup of old parameters

If you just quickly want to quickly get a setup for all available types of brackets, simply copy the following into your settings.json file.
For more details about the structure refer to the custom symbols chapter.

    "BracketHighlighter.customSymbols": [
        {
            "highlightPair": [
                {
                    "symbol": "(",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                },
                {
                    "symbol": ")",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "highlightPair": [
                {
                    "symbol": "[",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                },
                {
                    "symbol": "]",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "highlightPair": [
                {
                    "symbol": "{",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                },
                {
                    "symbol": "}",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "highlightPair": [
                {
                    "symbol": "<",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                },
                {
                    "symbol": ">",
                    "isRegex": false,
                    "canBeSubstring": true
                }
            ]
        }
    ]

Custom symbols

The following example highlights an advanced usage scenario with regular expressions.
Here you can see the full configuration set. It is not necessary to set everything here, for a minimal example refer to chapter minimal custom example.
The following parameters can be configured for each highlight pair:

• symbol: Symbol to use for the pair
• isRegex: Whether the given symbol is a regular expression
• canBeSubstring: Whether the given symbol can be part of a substring or not. Not used if isRegex: true.

NOTE

Please note the following points:

• The order of the highlight pair actually matters. The first entry of the highlight pair will be the opening symbol, the second one the closing symbol.
• Multiple symbols with the same starting or closing symbols can cause weird or unexpected behavior. Consider using a regular expression, which combines the symbols instead.

    "BracketHighlighter.customSymbols": [
        {
            "highlightPair": [
              {
                  "symbol": "\\b(do\\b(?!:)|fn\\b)",
                  "isRegex": true,
                  "canBeSubstring": true
              },
              {
                  "symbol": "\\bend\\b",
                  "isRegex": true,
                  "canBeSubstring": true
              },
            ],
            "jumpBetweenStrategy": "toSymbolOppositeSide"
        }
    ]

Minimal custom symbol example

The smalles configuration you can have with the new syntax is the following:

    "BracketHighlighter.customSymbols": [
        {
            "highlightPair": [
              {
                  "symbol": "/*",
              },
              {
                  "symbol": "*/",
              },
            ],
        }
    ]

Planned improvements

• This extension is feature complete. If you think something is missing please refer to the next paragraph.

Feature requests and bug reports

Please mail them to me at dev@durzn.com or create an open issue at https://github.com/Durzn/BracketHighlighter Thanks to everyone reporting issues and requesting new features. The extension wouldn't be anywhere near where it currently is without these.

Special thanks

Art_of_bini

for the great extension icon. See more from her on her instagram page https://www.instagram.com/art_of_bini/

You

for using this extension :)

Support

I'm working on projects like this extension in my free time. If you want to buy me a coffee to keep me awake for more work on my projects, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I also gladly accept Ada over this address: addr1qyz4hp9a5m844c5dn7nz56vget0lcx2lxg9eg02x9nyg82m7306tyvjqygl08grv79tm2jw0sh9lg8nr5u0g0qvf2nlsw376z4