NEdit can process tags files generated
using the Unix ctags command or the Exuberant Ctags
program. Ctags creates index files correlating names
of functions and declarations with their locations
in C, Fortran, or Pascal source code files. (See the
ctags manual page for more information). Ctags produces
a file called "tags" which can be loaded
by NEdit. NEdit can manage any number of tags files
simultaneously. Tag collisions are handled with a
popup menu to let the user decide which tag to use.
In 'Smart' mode NEdit will automatically choose the
desired tag based on the scope of the file or module.
Once loaded, the information in the tags file enables
NEdit to go directly to the declaration of a highlighted
function or data structure name with a single command.
To load a tags file, select "" from the File menu and choose
a tags file to load, or specify the name of the tags
file on the NEdit command line:
nedit -tags tags
NEdit can also be set to load a tags
file automatically when it starts up. Setting the
X resource nedit.tagFile
to the name of a tag file tells NEdit to look for
that file at startup time (see Customizing
NEdit). The file name can be either a complete
path name, in which case NEdit will always load the
same tags file, or a file name without a path or with
a relative path, in which case NEdit will load it
starting from the current directory. The second option
allows you to have different tags files for different
projects, each automatically loaded depending on the
directory you're in when you start NEdit. Setting
the name to "tags" is an obvious choice
since this is the name that ctags uses.
To unload a tags file, select "" from the File menu and choose
from the list of tags files. NEdit will keep track
of tags file updates by checking the timestamp on
the files, and automatically update the tags cache.
To find the definition of a function
or data structure once a tags file is loaded, select
the name anywhere it appears in your program (see
Selecting
Text) and choose "" from the
menu.
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