A way to detect bracket pairings in a macro?

[Alt Kah]

I would like a way to do the following:

Position on the first of some sort of structure, like so

structure header [
  Item 1;
  Item 2 is a Structure
  [ Item 2a;
    Item 2b;
  ];
  One last item;
]; #end of the structure

And what I want to be able to do is, select all the lines of text and Ctrl-J them into a single line, so I would end up with this:

structure header [   Item 1;   Item 2 is a Structure   [ Item 2a;     Item 2b;   ];   One last item; ]; #end of the structure

Leveraging the logic N++ uses to detect the end bracket when positioned on the beginning. This would get rolled into a macro that handles each line after the joining.

Any idea how to accomplish this?

[PeterJones]

@Alt-Kah said in A way to detect bracket pairings in a macro?:

Any idea how to accomplish this?

Fortunately, there are recordable menu commands that do the various steps you want.

1. Move the cursor to the [ or ] for the brace pair you are interested in
2. Macro > Start Recording
3. Search > Select All Between Matching Braces (default shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+B)
4. Edit > Line Operations > Join Lines (default shortcut: Ctrl+J)
5. Macro > Stop Recording
6. Macro > Save Current Recorded Macro to Join Matching Braces or whatever you want to call it, and assign a keyboard shortcut to your liking

[Alt Kah]

@PeterJones Thanks! I had no idea there was a “Select All Between Matching Braces” but that will do the trick!