Auto-Closing Pairs

The extension provides intelligent auto-closing for Stata's unique quoting conventions. Unlike VS Code's built-in auto-closing pairs, this feature handles Stata's overlapping delimiters correctly.

Supported Patterns

You Type	Result	Description
`	`|'	Local macro reference
\`\`	\`\`|''	Nested local macro (double backticks)
`"	`"|"'	Compound string
"	"|"	Double-quoted string

Note: | represents cursor position.

Skip-Over Behavior

When you manually type a closing character that was auto-inserted, the extension skips over it instead of inserting a duplicate:

Context	You Type	Result
`macro|'	'	`macro'|
"string|"	"	"string"|
`"string|"'	'	`"string"'|

This prevents common issues like ending up with "string"" or `macro''.

How It Works

The extension uses a onDidChangeTextDocument listener rather than VS Code's type command interceptor. This approach:

• Does not conflict with other extensions
• Reacts after the character is inserted
• Checks context to determine appropriate closing characters

Preserved Behaviors

Standard auto-closing pairs continue to work via VS Code's language configuration:

• { → {|}
• [ → [|]
• ( → (|)