Changes in 6.0.0

Maintainer:

Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com>

Many changes have been introduced in Universal Ctags. Use git-log to review changes not enumerated here, especially in language parsers.

New and extended options

--exclude-exception, an option complementing --exclude

See Input/Output File Options in ctags(1).

--maxdepth option

See Input/Output File Options in ctags(1).

--input-encoding=ENCODING and --output-encoding=ENCODING

People may use their own native language in source code comments (or sometimes in identifiers) and in such cases encoding may become an issue. Nowadays UTF-8 is the most widely used encoding, but some source codes still use legacy encodings like latin1, cp932 and so on. These options are useful for such files.

ctags doesn’t consider the input encoding; it just reads input as a sequence of bytes and uses them as is when writing tags entries.

On the other hand Vim does consider input encoding. When loading a file, Vim converts the file contents into an internal format with one of the encodings specified in its fileencodings option.

As a result of this difference, Vim cannot always move the cursor to the definition of a tag as users expect when attempting to match the patterns in a tags file.

The good news is that there is a way to notify Vim of the encoding used in a tags file with the TAG_FILE_ENCODING pseudo-tag.

Two new options have been introduced (--input-encoding=IN and --output-encoding=OUT).

Using the encoding specified with these options ctags converts input from IN to OUT. ctags uses the converted strings when writing the pattern parts of each tag line. As a result the tags output is encoded in OUT encoding.

In addition OUT is specified at the top the tags file as the value for the TAG_FILE_ENCODING pseudo-tag. The default value of OUT is UTF-8.

NOTE: Converted input is NOT passed to language parsers. The parsers still deal with input as a byte sequence.

With --input-encoding-<LANG>=IN, you can specify a specific input encoding for LANG. It overrides the global default value given with --input-encoding.

The example usage can be found in Tmain/{input,output}-encoding-option.d.

Acceptable IN and OUT values can be listed with iconv -l or iconv --list. It is platform dependant.

To enable the option, libiconv is needed on your platform. On Windows mingw (without msys2), you must specify WITH_ICONV=yes like this:

C:\dev\ctags>mingw32-make -f mk_mingw.mak WITH_ICONV=yes

--list-features helps you to know whether your ctags executable links to libiconv or not. You will find iconv in the output if it links to.

See also Output Format Options in ctags(1).

--map-<LANG> option

--map-<LANG> is newly introduced to control the file name to language mappings (langmap) with finer granularity than --langmap allows.

A langmap entry is defined as a pair; the name of the language and a file name extension (or pattern).

Here we use “spec” as a generic term representing both file name extensions and patterns.

--langmap maps specs to languages exclusively:

$ ctags --langdef=FOO --langmap=FOO:+.ABC \
          --langdef=BAR --langmap=BAR:+.ABC  \
          --list-maps | grep '\*.ABC$'
BAR      *.ABC

Though language FOO is added before BAR, only BAR is set as a handler for the spec *.ABC.

Universal Ctags enables multiple parsers to be configured for a spec. The appropriate parser for a given input file can then be chosen by a variety of internal guessing strategies (see Determining file language).

Let’s see how specs can be mapped non-exclusively with --map-<LANG>:

$ ctags --langdef=FOO --map-FOO=+.ABC \
          --langdef=BAR --map-BAR=+.ABC \
          --list-maps | grep '\*.ABC$'
FOO      *.ABC
BAR      *.ABC

Both FOO and BAR are registered as handlers for the spec *.ABC.

--map-<LANG> can also be used for removing a langmap entry.:

$ ctags --langdef=FOO --map-FOO=+.ABC \
          --langdef=BAR --map-BAR=+.ABC \
          --map-FOO=-.ABC --list-maps | grep '\*.ABC$'
BAR      *.ABC

$ ctags --langdef=FOO --map-FOO=+.ABC \
          --langdef=BAR --map-BAR=+.ABC \
          --map-BAR=-.ABC --list-maps | grep '\*.ABC$'
FOO      *.ABC

$ ctags --langdef=FOO --map-FOO=+.ABC \
         --langdef=BAR --map-BAR=+.ABC \
         --map-BAR=-.ABC --map-FOO=-.ABC  --list-maps | grep '\*.ABC$'
(NOTHING)

--langmap provides a way to manipulate the langmap in a spec-centric manner and --map-<LANG> provides a way to manipulate the langmap in a parser-centric manner.

See also Language Selection and Mapping Options in ctags(1).

Guessing parser from file contents (-G option)

See Determining file language in ctags(1).

Including line number to pattern field

Use --excmd=number. See Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

Long names in kinds, fields, and extra options

A letter is used for specifying a kind, a field, or an extra entry. In Universal Ctags a name can also be used.

Surround the name with braces ({ and }) in values assigned to the options, --kind-<LANG>=, --fields=, or --extras=.

$ ctags --kinds-C=+L-d ...

This command line uses the letters, L for enabling the label kind and d for disabling the macro kind of C. The command line can be rewritten with the associated names.

$ ctags --kinds-C='+{label}-{macro}' ...

The quotes are needed because braces are interpreted as meta characters by the shell.

The available names can be listed with --list-kinds-full, --list-fields, or --list-extras.

See also Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

Wildcard in options

For the purpose of gathering as much as information as possible from source code the “wildcard”(*) option value has been introduced.

--extras=*

Enables all extra tags.

--fields=*

Enables all available fields.

--kinds-<LANG>=*

Enables all available kinds for LANG.

--kinds-all=*

Enables all available kinds for all available language parsers.

See also Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

Extra tag entries (--extras)

--extra option in Exuberant Ctags is renamed to --extras (plural) in Universal Ctags for making consistent with --kinds-<LANG> and --fields.

These extra tag entries are newly introduced.

F

Replacement for --file-scope.

p

Include pseudo-tags.

See also Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

Kinds synchronization

See the description about --kinds-<LANG> and --list-kinds-full option on Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

Enabling/disabling pseudo-tags (--pseudo-tags option)

See Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1) and ctags-client-tools(7) about the option.

--put-field-prefix options

See Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

“always” and “never” as an argument for --tag-relative

--tag-relative option is extend. See Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1).

Defining a parser specific extra

A new --_extradef-<LANG>=name,description option allows you to defining a parser specific extra which turning on and off can be referred from a regex based parser for <LANG>.

See Conditional tagging with extras for more details.

Defining a CPreProcessor macro from command line

Newly introduced -D option extends the function provided by -I option.

-D emulates the behaviour of the corresponding gcc option: it defines a C preprocessor macro.

See Tags File Contents Options in ctags(1) and The new C/C++ parser for more details.

Options for inspecting ctags internals

Exuberant Ctags provides a way to inspect its internals via --list-kinds, --list-languages, and --list-maps.

This idea has been expanded in Universal Ctags with --list-kinds-full, --list-map-extensions, --list-extras, --list-features, --list-fields, --list-map-patterns, and --list-pseudo-tags being added.

The original three --list- options are not changed for compatibility reasons, however, the newly introduced options are recommended for all future use.

By default, interactive use is assumed and ctags tries aligning the list output in columns for easier reading.

When --machinable is given before a --list- option, ctags outputs the list in a format more suitable for processing by scripts. Tab characters are used as separators between columns. The alignment of columns is never considered when --machinable is given.

Currently only --list-extras, --list-fields and --list-kinds-full support --machinable output.

These new --list- options also print a column header, a line representing the name of each column. The header may help users and scripts to understand and recognize the columns. Ignoring the column header is easy because it starts with a # character.

--with-list-header=no suppresses output of the column header.

See also Listing Options in ctags(1).

Notice messages and --quiet

There were 3 classes of message in Exuberant Ctags. In addition to them Universal Ctags introduced a new class of message, notice.

fatal

A critical error has occurred and ctags aborts the execution.

warning

An error has occurred but ctags continues the execution.

notice (new)

It is less important than warning but more important for users than verbose.

verbose

Mainly used for debugging purposes.

Generally the user can ignore notice class messages and --quiet can be used to disable them.

verbose class messages are disabled by default, and --verbose or -V can be used to enable them.

See also Miscellaneous Options in ctags(1).

Skipping utf-8 BOM

The three bytes sequence(\xEF\xBB\xBF) at the head of an input file is skipped when parsing.

TODO:

  • Do the same in guessing and selecting parser stage.

  • Refect the BOM detection to encoding option

Interactive mode

A new --_interactive option launches a JSON based command REPL which can be used to control ctags generation programmatically.

See Interactive mode for more details.

PCRE2 regular expression

With {pcre2} (or p) flag, PCRE2 expressions can be used in --regex-<LANG>=, --mline-regex-<LANG>=, and --_mtable-regex-<LANG>= if the ctags is built with pcre2 library.

Incompatible changes in command line

-D option

For a ctags binary that had debugging output enabled in the build config stage, -D was used for specifying the level of debugging output. It is changed to -d. This change is not critical because -D option was not described in ctags.1 man page.

Instead -D is used for defining a macro in CPreProcessor parser.

Changes imported from Exuberant Ctags

See “Exuberant Ctags” in “Tracking other projects” for detailed information regarding imported changes.

Some changes have also been imported from Fedora and Debian.

Readtags

Printing line numbers with -n

See readtags(1).

Filtering in readtags command

See readtags(1).

readtags has ability to find tag entries by name.

The concept of filtering is inspired by the display filter of Wireshark. You can specify more complex conditions for searching.

All symbols starting with $ represent a field of a tag entry which is being tested against the S expression. Most will evaluate as a string or #f. It evaluates to #f when the field doesn’t exist.

The scope field holds structured data: the kind and name of the upper scope combined with :. The hold the value is stored to $scope. The kind part is mapped to $scope-kind, and the name part to $scope-name.

$scope-kind and $scope-name can only be used if the input tags file is generated by ctags with --fields=+Z.

$ is a generic accessor for accessing extension fields. $ takes one argument: the name of an extension field. It returns the value of the field as a string if a value is given, or #f.

Following examples shows how prefix?, suffix?, and substr? work.

(prefix? "TARGET" "TA")
=> #t

(prefix? "TARGET" "RGET")
=> #f

(prefix? "TARGET" "RGE")
=> #f

(suffix? "TARGET" "TA")
=> #f

(suffix? "TARGET" "RGET")
=> #t

(suffix? "TARGET" "RGE")
=> #f

(substr? "TARGET" "TA")
=> #t

(suffix? "TARGET" "RGET")
=> #t

(suffix? "TARGET" "RGE")
=> #t

(and (suffix? "TARGET" "TARGET")
     (prefix? "TARGET" "TARGET")
     (substr? "TARGET" "TARGET")
=> #t

Sorting in readtags command

readtags can sort the tag entries before printing. You can specify the way to sort with -S option. Like -Q option, -S also takes an S expression.

See readtags(1).

Listing pseudo tags with -D

See readtags(1).