What's Your Method of not forgetting the end brackets, parentheses

Question

disclaimer: for simplicity sake, brackets will refer to brackets, braces, quotes, and parentheses in the couse of this question. Carry on.

When writing code, I usually type the beginning and end element first, and then go back and type the inner stuff. This gets to be a lot of backspacing, especially when doing something with many nested elements like:

jQuery(function($){$('#element[input="file"]').hover(function(){$(this).fadeOut();}));

Is there a more efficient way of remembering how many brackets you've got open ?

Or a second example with quotes:

<?php echo '<input value="'.$_POST['name'].'" />"; ?>

Answer 1

I start out like this {}, then usually fill them with something. Whenever you type {, type a corresponding } and stick it on a new line. The worst thing you have to do in that case is fix indentation prior to committing.

Good syntax highlighters will often alert you to a problem, but not always. My preferred editor KATE, for instance, choked on a JSON formatted 'printf style' variadic argument string.

Don't trust bracket and paren highlighting! Always close what you open immediately after opening it and then fill in the gaps.

Answer 2

Indentation

One-liners like that do introduce a bit of a hazard in terms of keeping the brackets correctly matched. Most decent editors will match the brackets visually to help, but it is easier to expand it.

(function($) {
    $('#element[input="file"]').hover(function() {
        $(this).fadeOut();
    }, function() {
        $(this).fadeIn();
    });
})(jQuery);

Note your example was incorrectly matched.

Answer 3

Whenever I type an opening brace, my editor (Visual Studio with Visual Assist) inserts the closing one for me. Much easier...

Answer 4

Use a text editor that highlights matched parens as you type. A certain amount of count along the line, +1 for open, -1 for close, check you end back at zero will happen at some point, but very rarely if you have a good text editor.

Some command-line prompts probably do similar matched-paren-highlighting if you configure them for it, though my quick bash-in-konsole experiment didn't seem to do it by default.

In the past, I used to type each matched pair at once, then cursor back over the closing paren. Still do out of habit quite a bit. This sounds like what you describe, but there's no backspacing, only cursor-left into the parens, and cursor-right to escape back out.

Answer 5

When i use an editor that does not close my braces/parenthesis automatically I create them both at the same time. Then move them to their ending location. This is convienent when you have a coding pattern that you have settled into. Even if your one lining it, creating opening and closing brackets at the same time wont hurt. I use the same practice with JavaScript, C#, and Ruby. Try it.

e.g.

Step 1

if(true)

Step 2

if(true){}

Step 3

if(true)
{
    //Put your code here
}

Answer 6

I almost never forget to close my braces. I guess there is a mixture at work.

• I code in small pieces. I try to avoid methods longer than a screen. Use submethods instead.
• Indentation helps, if I'm not sure, whether I have to close something
• compiling. Yes - I use a language which warns me if I forgot a brace. But I get warnings seldom.

Answer 7

An editor with good syntax highlighting helps a lot.

I use Vim, for example, which by default (since 7.0, I think) highlights the matching paren/brace/bracket as you type or when the cursor is on one of them. It even highlights as an error when there are unmatched pairs.

If your editor does not do this, it is doing you a disservice. :)

Answer 8

If I miss it, the compiler will catch it. It's usually no big deal.

Answer 9

This is one reason I like non-C-type languages such as VB and Ruby, since they don't use curly brackets to mark blocks, or semicolons to end lines.

I know people tend to slag VB as "verbose", but I actually like the keywords it uses since the meaning is abundantly clear. I mean, it's easier to distinguish an "End If" line than it is to figure out if this curly brace ends a conditional, or a loop, or a function. Multiply this effect for nested blocks, and VB wins for scan-ability in my eyes.

Just putting my two cents out there.