Someone on gnu.emacs.help asked if there was a way to browse through multiple matching tags for an identifier and choose a specific one (as opposed to tags-loop-continue). This is helpful when you have overloaded function names and want to go to the right one. I am using an aspect-oriented language (Specman) that extends methods all over the place, so this was something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while. So I finally took a couple hours and did it.
It works for EmacsTags in Emacs and XEmacs.
I have integrated this patch after having used it for a month and it works fine imo. It adds TAB completion just like find-tag has. - MartinNordholts
Tag completion been updated to work on Emacs/XEmacs. - ScottFrazer
On Emacs 22.2.1, I get “Buffer is read-only error” when I press return. - bvk-chaitanya
Do you have some hook or minor-mode that overrides ‘return’ for all modes? - ScottFrazer
To find tags in a included tags file, such as TAGS-LISP for Emacs Lisp, re-define ‘etags-select-get-tag-files’ as
(defun etags-select-get-tag-files ()
"Get tag files."
(if etags-select-use-xemacs-etags-p
(buffer-tag-table-list)
(mapcar 'tags-expand-table-name tags-table-list)
(tags-table-check-computed-list)
tags-table-computed-list))etags-select.el provide a bottom window for select
| source | |
| select |
But sometimes, the select info is too short (e.g. struct abc under different #define condition). So a preview window besides select window will be helpful.
| source | ||
| select | preview | |
See EmacsTags EtagsTable
Vim has a nice feature where you can indicate that you would like the editor to search up the directory tree from the current working directory for a file named “tags”. These two functions provide that for etags-select.el, searching up the filesystem from the buffer-file-name of the current buffer. (Modified version from EmacsTags)
;;load the etags-select.el source code
(load-file "path/to/etags-select.el")
;;binding the key
(global-set-key "\M-?" 'etags-select-find-tag-at-point)
(global-set-key "\M-." 'etags-select-find-tag)
(defun jds-find-tags-file ()
"recursively searches each parent directory for a file named 'TAGS' and returns the
path to that file or nil if a tags file is not found. Returns nil if the buffer is
not visiting a file"
(progn
(defun find-tags-file-r (path)
"find the tags file from the parent directories"
(let* ((parent (file-name-directory path))
(possible-tags-file (concat parent "TAGS")))
(cond
((file-exists-p possible-tags-file) (throw 'found-it possible-tags-file))
((string= "/TAGS" possible-tags-file) (error "no tags file found"))
(t (find-tags-file-r (directory-file-name parent))))))
(if (buffer-file-name)
(catch 'found-it
(find-tags-file-r (buffer-file-name)))
(error "buffer is not visiting a file"))))
(defun jds-set-tags-file-path ()
"calls `jds-find-tags-file' to recursively search up the directory tree to find
a file named 'TAGS'. If found, set 'tags-table-list' with that path as an argument
otherwise raises an error."
(interactive)
(setq tags-table-list (cons (jds-find-tags-file) tags-table-list)))
;; delay search the TAGS file after open the source file
(add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook
'(lambda () (jds-set-tags-file-path)))
I love etags-select, but I also really like ido’s fuzzy matching, so I mixed the two. Based on a contribution on the InteractivelyDoThings page, I came up with this function:
;; Use ido to list tags, but then select via etags-select (best of both worlds!)
(defun my-ido-find-tag ()
"Find a tag using ido"
(interactive)
(tags-completion-table)
(let (tag-names)
(mapatoms (lambda (x)
(push (prin1-to-string x t) tag-names))
tags-completion-table)
(etags-select-find (ido-completing-read "Tag: " tag-names))))
(global-set-key (kbd "M-.") 'my-ido-find-tag)
See Also: Icicles command ‘icicle-search-tag’. You can browse matching tags (including duplicates) in any order, and not necessarily consecutively. Very easy to filter tags to those you want to visit, using regexps; you can filter the source files to search also. Tag completion is also available.