match_parens(1) DekDoc scripts match_parens(1)
NAME
match_parens - find mismatches of various brackets and quotes
Synopsis
match_parens [filename]
Options
-h
print this help and exit
-H,--help
print full documentation and exit
-V,--version
print version and exit
-l,--latex
convert ``...'' to "..." before testing
-n,--number=N
set number of mismatching characters shown to N (default: 10)
-p,--pairs=S
set matching pairs to S (default: {}[]()""<<>>`'""'')
--test
do an internal test and exit
Description
Mismatches of parentheses, braces, (angle) brackets, especially in TeX
sources which may be rich in those, may be difficult to trace. This
little script helps you by writing your text to standard output, after
adding a left margin to your text, which will normally be almost empty,
but will clearly show up to 10 mismatches. (Just try me on myself to
see that the parenthesis starting this sentence will not appear to be
matched at the end of the file. If you look at me in the vim editor,
then select this paragraph and try the command: :!%.
By default, the following pairs are tested:
()
round brackets or parentheses
{}
curly brackets or braces
[]
square brackets
<>
angle brackets (within html text only)
ASCII double quotes
""
Unicode double quotation marks
''
ASCII single quotes
`'
Unicode single quotation marks
The exit value of the script is 0 when there are no mismatches, 1
otherwise.
Angle brackets are only looked for inside HTML text, where HTML is
supposed to start with <html> or =begin<?>rdoc and to end with </html>
or =end.
Options
-h,--help
print short help information and exit.
-H,--Help
print full documentation via less and exit.
-V,--version
print this script's version and exit.
-l,--latex
convert ``...'' to "..." before testing.
-n,--number=N
Set number of mismatching characters shown to N. By default,
only the first 10 are shown.
-p,--pairs=S
Set matching pairs to S (default: {}[]()""''<<>>""`'). For
example, if you want to look for mismatching ASCII single quotes
only, use --pairs="''". Or, if you want to match braces and
guillemets only, use -p<?><<>>. Note that if html is detected in
your text, <> is automatically added to the pairs list. So by
default, <...> is tested only in html, but you can test that in
other text by specifying the <> pair in the --pairs option.
--test
do an internal test and exit. Note that if, with the --pairs
option, you specify an other pairs list than the default, the
test will probably fail, but you can still see the effects of
your pairs list on the test data.
Examples
Suppose we have two files, good and bad, containing these texts:
good:
This is a (simple) test without mismatches
bad:
This is a (simple test containing mismatches
then here are some usage examples. First a simple test on these files:
$ matchparens good
1 || This is a (simple) test
2 || without mismatches
$ echo $?
0
$ matchparens bad
1 | (| This is a (simple test
2 | (| containing mismatches
$ echo $?
1
Just report if there are mismatches: $ matchparens good >/dev/null
&& echo fine || echo problems
fine
$ matchparens bad >/dev/null && echo fine || echo problems
problems
Report all tex files with mismatches in the current directory: $ for
i in *.tex; do matchparens $i >/dev/null || echo $i; done
Matches must be in correct order: $ echo -e "This is a ([simple)]
test0 | match_parens
1 ([)]This is a ([simple)] test
2 ([)]
Author
Wybo Dekker (wybodekker@me.com)
Copyright
Released under the GNU General Public License
(www.gnu.orgcopyleftgpl.html)
match_parens version 1.45 September 30, 2025 match_parens(1)
texlive-bin-extra 78219 - Generated Fri Mar 6 07:27:23 CST 2026