Automatically closing braces in Emacs?

Question

I\'ve seen a plugin for Vim called AutoClose (discovered from this post) which automatically adds the closing brace when typing \'(\', \'{\' etc.

For example; when I

Answer 1

cmarcelo has written a wonderful post about this using skeleton mode. He also shows how to remove the balanced bracket if you delete the opening bracket and how to deal with the case that you accidentally type the closing bracket. (Incidentally both behaviors copy TextMate).

Update:

Since I posted this answer, I've discovered Autopair which is a pretty much perfect system for this use case. I've been using it a lot and loving it.