zsh-autopair

A simple plugin that auto-closes, deletes and skips over matching delimiters in zsh intelligently. Hopefully.

NOTE: zsh-autopair is untested for versions of Zsh below 5.0.2. Please report any issues you have in earlier versions!

Specifically, zsh-autopair does 5 things for you:

1. It inserts matching pairs (by default, that means brackets, quotes and spaces):

   e.g. echo | => " => echo "|"

2. It skips over matched pairs:

   e.g. cat ./*.{py,rb|} => } => cat ./*.{py,rb}|

3. It auto-deletes pairs on backspace:

   e.g. git commit -m "|" => backspace => git commit -m |

4. And does all of the above only when it makes sense to do so. e.g. when the pair is balanced and when the cursor isn't next to a boundary character:

   e.g. echo "|"" => backspace => echo |"" (doesn't aggressively eat up too many quotes)

5. Spaces between brackets are expanded and contracted.

   e.g. echo [|] => space => echo [ | ] => backspace => echo [|]

Table of Contents

• Install
  • Antigen
  • zgen
  • zplug
• Configuration
  • Adding/Removing pairs
• Troubleshooting & compatibility issues
  • zgen & prezto compatibility
  • text on right-side of cursor interfere with completion
  • zsh-autopair & isearch?
  • Midnight Commander
• Other resources

Install

Download and source autopair.zsh

if [[ ! -d ~/.zsh-autopair ]]; then
  git clone https://github.com/hlissner/zsh-autopair ~/.zsh-autopair
fi

source ~/.zsh-autopair/autopair.zsh
autopair-init

Antigen

antigen bundle hlissner/zsh-autopair

zgen

if ! zgen saved; then
    echo "Creating a zgen save"

    # ... other plugins
    zgen load hlissner/zsh-autopair

    zgen save
fi

zplug

Load autopair after compinit, otherwise, the plugin won't work.

zplug "hlissner/zsh-autopair", defer:2

Configuration

zsh-autopair sets itself up. You can prevent this by setting AUTOPAIR_INHIBIT_INIT.

Options:

• AUTOPAIR_BETWEEN_WHITESPACE (default: blank): if set, regardless of whether delimiters are unbalanced or do not meet a boundary check, pairs will be auto-closed if surrounded by whitespace, BOL or EOL.

• AUTOPAIR_INHIBIT_INIT (default: blank): if set, autopair will not automatically set up keybinds. Check out the initialization code if you want to know what it does.

• AUTOPAIR_PAIRS (default: ('`' '`' "'" "'" '"' '"' '{' '}' '[' ']' '(' ')' ' ' ' ')): An associative array that map pairs. Only one-character pairs are supported. To modify this, see the "Adding/Removing pairs" section.

• AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS/AUTOPAIR_RBOUNDS (default: see below): Associative lists of regex character groups dictating the 'boundaries' for autopairing depending on the delimiter. These are their default values:

  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS=(all '[.:/\!]')
  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS+=(quotes '[]})a-zA-Z0-9]')
  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS+=(spaces '[^{([]')
  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS+=(braces '')
  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS+=('`' '`')
  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS+=('"' '"')
  AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS+=("'" "'")
  
  AUTOPAIR_RBOUNDS=(all '[[{(<,.:?/%$!a-zA-Z0-9]')
  AUTOPAIR_RBOUNDS+=(quotes '[a-zA-Z0-9]')
  AUTOPAIR_RBOUNDS+=(spaces '[^]})]')
  AUTOPAIR_RBOUNDS+=(braces '')

  For example, if $AUTOPAIR_LBOUNDS[braces]="[a-zA-Z]", then braces ({([) won't be autopaired if the cursor follows an alphabetical character.

  Individual delimiters can be used too. Setting $AUTOPAIR_RBOUNDS['{']="[0-9]" will cause { specifically to not be autopaired when the cursor precedes a number.

Adding/Removing pairs

You can change the designated pairs in zsh-autopair by modifying the AUTOPAIR_PAIRS envvar. This can be done before initialization like so:

typeset -gA AUTOPAIR_PAIRS
AUTOPAIR_PAIRS+=("<" ">")

Or after initialization; however, you'll have to bind keys to autopair-insert manually:

AUTOPAIR_PAIRS+=("<" ">")
bindkey "<" autopair-insert
# prevents breakage in isearch
bindkey -M isearch "<" self-insert

To remove pairs, use unset 'AUTOPAIR_PAIRS[<]'. Unbinding is optional.

Troubleshooting & compatibility issues

zgen & prezto compatibility

Prezto's Editor module is known to reset autopair's bindings. A workaround is to defer autopair from initializing (by setting AUTOPAIR_INHIBIT_INIT=1) and initialize it manually (by calling autopair-init):

source "$HOME/.zgen/zgen.zsh"

# Add this
AUTOPAIR_INHIBIT_INIT=1

if ! zgen saved; then
    zgen prezto
    # ...
    zgen load hlissner/zsh-autopair 'autopair.zsh'
    #...
    zgen save
fi

# And this
autopair-init

text on right-side of cursor interfere with completion

Bind Tab to expand-or-complete-prefix and completion will ignore what's to the right of cursor:

bindkey '^I' expand-or-complete-prefix

This has the unfortunate side-effect of overwriting whatever's right of the cursor, however.

zsh-autopair & isearch?

zsh-autopair silently disables itself in isearch, as the two are incompatible.

Midnight Commander

MC hangs when zsh-autopair tries to bind the space key. This also breaks the MC subshell.

Disable space expansion to work around this: unset 'AUTOPAIR_PAIRS[ ]'

Other resources

• Works wonderfully with [zsh-syntax-highlight] and ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_HIGHLIGHTERS+=brackets, but zsh-syntax-highlight must be loaded after zsh-autopair.
• Mixes well with these vi-mode zsh modules: surround, select-quoted, and select-bracketed (they're built into zsh as of zsh-5.0.8)
• Other relevant repositories of mine:
  • dotfiles
  • emacs.d
  • vimrc
  • zshrc