Grepping Cross References

This tool is like lxr, except it works for most programming languages (as many as supported by ctags-exuberant) and allows you use it in Emacs/Vim instead of a browser.

See some screenshots for c++, python, and shell script (click to view in the original size):

c-grep-func.png

py-grep-func.png

sh-grep-func.png

Here I'll explain some of its features and how it works.

1 It's very fast

Because beagrep is being used, which can grep 2G source code in 0.23 second.

For e.g., when checking cross references for MockZip, first we use beagrep to find out the (tiny) set of files and line numbers on which this word occurs. Then we work on these files only.

2 It support most programming languages

Because ctags-exuberant is used.

Given the small set of files containing MockZip, we use ctags-exuberant to tag each of these files, then compare line numbers. If MockZip occurs on line 88, then the last tag before line 88 is referencing MockZip.

3 It removes false positives

Currently it can take 2 arguments --nc (no comment) and --ns= (no string) to ignore where MockZip occurs inside a comment or string literal.

4 It reuses grep output format

For easy integration with Emacs's grep-mode. Or vim's handling of grep output.

5 It's not perfect

But good enough (at least for me:-)

6 How to use it

  1. Install beagrep and ctags-exuberant.
  2. Download and get the package from gxr.
  3. In your gxr checkout: 
    cp .globalrc ~
cp $(find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -executable) ~/system-config/bin # or some other dir in your PATH
  4. mkdir ~/.logs
  5. Create beagrep index in your source tree.
  6. grep-func-call -e MockZip -a --nc --ns
  7. File a bug on the github project:-)

Here are the arguments:

-e pattern
PATTERN is a perl style regexp. When you want to find only those cross references where a var named my_var is assigned a value, use a pattern like my_var\s*=[^=].

\b is added when appropriate, so that a pattern of my_var will not find my_var2 because I do myself a favor by changing the pattern to \bmy_var\b. If I also want my_var2 I can use my_var2?.

-a
-a is a toggle switch, one -a will search in all source files, two (even number of) -a will search only in the file $GTAGS_START_FILE (the file my Emacs's current buffer is visiting, I added a hook in grep, the current buffer's file will be exported to the environment variable). 
(defun set-gtags-start-file ()
  (let ((file (ajoke--buffer-file-name (current-buffer))))
    (if (file-remote-p file)
        (let ((process-environment tramp-remote-process-environment))
          (setenv "GTAGS_START_FILE" (file-remote-p file 'localname))
          (setq tramp-remote-process-environment process-environment))
      (setenv "GTAGS_START_FILE" file))))

Always use -a if you are not sure of my hack.

–nc –ns
These has been explained above.