Alternatively known as an open brace, close brace, squiggly brackets, and flower brackets, curly brackets are found on the same keys as the open bracket [ and close bracket ] on U.S. keyboards.

Where are the curly bracket keys on the keyboard?

Below is an overview of a computer keyboard with the open and close curly bracket keys highlighted in blue.

  • Where are the curly bracket keys on the keyboard?
  • How to create an open and close curly bracket.
  • How are curly brackets used?
  • What are the other symbols on the curly bracket keys?
  • Related information.
  • Keyboard help and support.

How to create an open and close curly bracket

Creating the “{” and “}” symbols on a U.S. keyboard

On English keyboards, the open bracket and close bracket are on the same key as [ and ] (square bracket) keys, located near Enter. To get a curly bracket, press and hold Shift, then press { or } keyboard key.

Creating the “{” and “}” symbol on a smartphone or tablet

To create a curly bracket on a smartphone or tablet, open the keyboard, go to the numbers (123) menu, then the (#+=) or symbols (sym) menu, and tap the “{” or “}” symbol.

Doing the Alt code Alt+123 create an open curly bracket and Alt+125 creates a close curly bracket.

How are curly brackets used?

Curly brackets are commonly used in programming languages such as C, Java, Perl, and PHP to enclose groups of statements or blocks of code. Below is an example of what an enclosed statement looks like in Perl.

$value = 0;do { $value++; if ($value >= 10) { print “Value is equal to or greater than 10. Ending.”; exit; }} until ($value >= 100);

In the example above are two enclosed statements using curly brackets. The first group is the do loop that continues to increase the value of the $value variable up to 100. In that group is the if statement for checking if $value is greater than or equal to 10. Once $value is greater than or equal to 10, it prints a message and exits.

What are the other symbols on the curly bracket keys?

On U.S. keyboards, { and } (curly bracket) keys are shared with [ or ] (square bracket) keys. To create the curly bracket, press and hold Shift, and then press { or } keyboard key.

Keyboard terms, Programming terms, Punctuation, Square bracket

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