Using tags in Vim

Question

I know that Vim has sophisticated support for tags but I am struggling to get them to work with JavaScript and TCL.

I am using Vim 7.2.330 under Ubuntu Lucid, a standard Vim install and standard Exuberant CTags install.

I wish to keep my tags in a file called ~/.vimtags/tags

I have included the tags file in my vimrc file set tags+=$HOME."/vimtags/tags".

I have run the following command from the base code directory:

ctags-exuberant -f ~/.vimtags/tags -h ".js" --totals=yes --tag-relative=yes --fields=+akst -R

I also have the following in my .ctags file - I saw an article somewhere online that said you should add these to make it compatible with modern JavaScript.

--langdef=js
--langmap=js:.js
--regex-js=/([A-Za-z0-9._$]+)[ \t]*[:=][ \t]*\{/\1/,object/
--regex-js=/([A-Za-z0-9._$()]+)[ \t]*[:=][ \t]*function[ \t]*\(/\1/,function/
--regex-js=/function[ \t]+([A-Za-z0-9._$]+)[ \t]*\(([^)])\)/\1/,function/
--regex-js=/([A-Za-z0-9._$]+)[ \t]*[:=][ \t]*\[/\1/,array/
--regex-js=/([^= ]+)[ \t]*=[ \t]*[^"]'[^']*/\1/,string/
--regex-js=/([^= ]+)[ \t]*=[ \t]*[^']"[^"]*/\1/,string/

When I load up Vim, the tags file definitely gets loaded. A set tags? shows that the tag file has been included.

However, whenever I CTRL-] over a keyword, it always says that there are no tags.

Please could you share how you set up Vim tags with JavaScript, and also show how you use the tag system? It seems to be a great feature of Vim, if only I could get it working.

Arkansas

How did you resolve this? It looks like at least a couple of people are looking for an answer (2 favourites) but the accepted answer doesn't appear to be the solution to your problem. – Elvieelvin

Answer 1

However, whenever I CTRL-] over a keyword, it always says that there are no tags.

tags are not supposed to work on keywords, they work on symbols you have defined (functions, variables, constants, etc) in the indexed files. So if you are trying on a Javascript keyword it won't work. It won't work on a function from a library either, if you have not included the JS library to your tag file (using ctags -a for example).

If you want to be sure what has been indexed and what you have access to with <C-]>, you can simply open your "tag" file, and see what's in there.

:e ~/.vimtags/tags

You should see a header with information relative to the tag file format, followed by a tag list, which include the tag name followed by a file path, a line number, and a character identifying the type of tag.

If it has some content, it should work for the listed symbols.

Regarding your ctag setup, it looks fine in my opinion.

Methedrine

By keywords, I meant variables, functions... etc. But I still cant seem to get it to work. I have managed to find tags on one or two variables but there should be a whole lot more... – Arkansas

@mrwooster: Ok I was suspecting that keyword was used in a lose sense. If you open you tag file, can you identify the kind of tag that is included and the kind of tag which seems missing. You can possibly track this way if it is a path issue (some of your files are ignored) or a regexp issue (some functions or declarations are ignored), etc. – Methedrine

@Arkansas : if you finally managed to get tag working in your setup, can you tell us what was wrong ? It could benefit the next person with the same kind of issue. – Methedrine

Answer 2

There is a very neat and easy way to get JavaScript source-code browsing / tag-listing in Vim, using Mozilla's DoctorJS (formerly known as jsctags).

See my answer for this question for more info.

Enjoy. :)

Plainlaid