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Tip 1018 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created 2005 · complexity intermediate · author Craig Emery · version 6.0


I use tags a lot. I usually have one tag file per subsystem and I add and remove them from my tags variable when my "focus" changes.

Anyway, one circumstance that I find myself in some times is that I know a function exists and I have a good idea what it's called but can't remember the exact name.

Scenario: find the event handler function.

Ambiguity: Is it handleEvent, HandleEvent, handle_the_event?

Solution: Use regular expressions and command completion to guess.

:tj /handle.*event<C-D>

When using the tag family of commands you can search through tags when the first character of the keyword you give to the command is /

When used in conjunction with command-line completion (using CTRL-D) you get "instant" feedback on whether your regular expression was close enough.

In a simpler scenario all tag searches using the / character are case insensitive, so even when used without a regular expression, / can help you find the tag you're looking for.

Comments[]

I should point out that if you have ignorecase (ic) set, then the tags family of commands all do tag lookup in a case insensitive manner, so using / without a regular expression is really just a one-off short-cut to dong a tags lookup whilst ignoring case. It really just saves you setting ic and then unsetting it afterwards.


Or you can use /\cregexp for searching (adding \c after / makes the search case insensitive).


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