Environments

Playing with environments

Inserting an environment

• To start a new environment, you can type \begin and select the begin a new environment snippet. A multi-cursor is added to enter the environment name simultaneously in the begin and end commands.
• Most environments can also be started by simply typing \ followed by the environment name. For instance, to start en equation environment, type \equation and choose the \begin{equation}...\end{equation} snippet.
• Some common environments have specific snippets of the form B + the first two or three letters of the environment name, see the full list.
• To surround some selected text with an environment, call LaTeX Workshop: Surround/wrap selection with \begin{}...\end{} from the Command Palette (command latex-workshop.wrap-env). A multi-cursor is added inside the braces, to insert the environment name.

Itemize like environments

When the current line starts with \item or \item[], hitting Enter automatically adds a newline starting in the same way. For a better handling of the last item, hitting Enter on a line only containing \item or \item[] actually deletes the content of the line. The alt+Enter key is bind to the standard newline command.

This automatic insertion of \item can be deactivated by setting latex-workshop.bind.enter.key to false.

In any case, you can use the shortcut ctrl+l, ctrl+Enter to insert a newline and \item. On Mac, ctrl is replaced by ⌘.

Navigating

• To navigate from \begin/\end to the corresponding \end/\begin, while on the begin or end keywords, call LaTeX Workshop: Navigate to matching begin/end from the Command Palette (command latex-workshop.navigate-envpair).
• To select the current environment name, call LaTeX Workshop: Select the current environment name from the Command Palette (command latex-workshop.select-envname). For this command to work, the cursor must be strictly between \begin{...} and \end{...}. Repeated calls result in selecting the outer environment. Note: this function does not work with the Vim extension.
• To add a multi-cursor to the current environment name, call LaTeX Workshop: Add a multi-cursor to the current environment name from the Command Palette (command latex-workshop.multicursor-envname). For this command to work, the cursor must be strictly between \begin{...} and \end{...}. Repeated calls result in selecting the outer environments.

These three functions are directly available from the TeX badge.

Closing the current environment

• To auto close LaTeX environments, call LaTeX Workshop: Close current environment from the Command Palette (command function latex-workshop.close-env).

Surrounding selection with an environment

To surround some selected text with an environment, call LaTeX Workshop: Surround/wrap selection with \begin{}...\end{} from the Command Palette (command latex-workshop.wrap-env). A multi-cursor is added inside the braces, to insert the environment name.