Jump from one XML tag to the closing one

Question

Is there a shortcut to jump from, e.g, <XX> to </XX>?

I already gave it a try with %, but it doesn't work in this situation.

Answer 1

You can jump between tags using visual operators, for example:

1. Place the cursor on the tag.
2. Enter visual mode by pressing v.
3. Select the outer tag block by pressing a+t or i+t for the inner tag block.

Your cursor should jump forward to the matching closing HTML/XML tag. To jump backwards from closing tag, press o or O to jump to the opposite tag.

Now you can either exit visual selection by pressing Esc, change it with c or copy it with y.

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To record that action into a register, press qq to start recording, perform the tag jump as above (including Esc), press q to finish. Then to invoke the jump, press @q.

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See more help at :help visual-operators or :help v_it:

at a <tag> </tag> block (with tags)

it inner <tag> </tag> block

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Alternatively, use a plugin such as matchit.vim (See: Using % in languages without curly braces).

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See also:

• How to jump between matching HTML/XML tags? at Vim SE
• Jump to matching XML tags in Vim at Stack Overflow SE
• How can I find the closing HTML tag quickly in Vim? at Stack Overflow SE
• Navigating HTML tags in Vim at Stack Overflow SE
• How to navigate between begin and end html tag? at Super User SE
• How can I select an html tag's content in Vim? at Super User SE

Answer 2

• Install the matchit plugin (see :help matchit-install for instructions).
• Make sure automatic file-type detection and plugin-loading is enabled (:filetype plugin on).

Henceforth, whenever you edit a file detected as xml or html or some other tag-based markup language, the combination of the matchit plugin and the filetype plugin files will allow the % motion to match open and close tags.