Using % in languages without curly braces

Question

In C and C-like languages, I can use % to jump to the corresponding curly brace that the cursor is on. This is a well-known "trick".

But in Ruby for example:

def fun
    [1, 2].each do |n|
    end
end 

This doesn't work, since ruby doesn't use the characters in matchpairs (set to (:),{:},[:],<:> by default.

I tried setting that, but it doesn't work:

:set matchpairs=def:end
E474: Invalid argument: matchpairs=def:end

Can I get this to work with languages such as Ruby as well? Note this is not a Ruby-specific question, other examples might be shell scripts (if/fi) or Lua (function/end), and many many more.

Answer 1

You can use the matchit plugin. This is included in modern vim distributions, so all you have to do to use it is add the following to your vimrc:

runtime macros/matchit.vim

You can also get it packaged as a plugin if you prefer. It recognizes many keywords by default (including def and end) and can be extended to recognize more.

Answer 2

The following doc matchit, the the additions below in ~/.vimrc worked for me

:runtime macros/matchit.vim
filetype plugin on