If you are like me, then it is easy to miss a bracket or two in my source code. Or I have tons of closing brackets at the end of a function, and it is hard to tell which one is which? Eclipse comes with basic bracket support: you select/click a bracket, and it helps you to find the closing one. I was pretty happy about that, unless I saw a list of most popular Eclipse plugin. One plugin stood out of the masses in the Top 10 Most Popular New Eclipse Plugins review: Bracketeer. That plugin exactly helps me to solve my problem: which bracket is which?

Brackets

It would be really cool to know to which code block each ‘}’ belongs. And Bracketeer can do this for me!

Installation

To install the plugin, use the menu Help > Install New Software and point the Eclipse updater to following site:

http://chookapp.github.com/ChookappUpdateSite/

Bracketeer Installation

Bracketeer comes with support for CDT (C/C++) and JDT (Java). Just install for what you have installed in your Eclipse IDE.

Features

The plugins installs a new toolbar with 3 functions:

Bracketeer Toolbar

1. It shows matching brackets surrounding the cursor. I simply can place my cursor somewhere in the code, and it shows me the different levels of surrounding brackets in different color:
   

   Show matching cursor brackets

2. It shows matching brackets while hovering over it. Similar to the ‘cursor’, but only if hover with the mouse cursor. And it shows just the matching bracket:
   

   Matching Brackets with Mouse Hover

3. And this is the coolest thing of all! It shows hints in the editor view:
   

   Bracketeer Hints

The really cool thing of the last features is that it does auto-commenting: It shows you the corresponding block condition in the source view, *without* touching the source code.

Plus it allows you as well to use a hyperlink to the corresponding block: simply press CTRL and use your mouse to jump to the block other end:

Hyperlink with Bracketeer

Plus it informs me about unpaired/wrong brackets too:

Wrong Brackets

Cool, eh?

Preferences

Bracketeer has as well rich settings where you can configure the look and feel of it:

Bracketeer Preferences

Happy Bracketeering