Re: Coding standards

[Phil Edwards <pedwards at jaj dot com>]

> tags are a way of accelerating symbol lookup, like a simple browser.  You
> run etags on a group of files and then use M-. in emacs to jump to a symbol
> definition, or M-x tags-search to do a grep on all the files listed in the
> tags file.  I use these all the time.  See the TAGS rules in various
> Makefiles.
>
> I think vi also supports tags, but I don't know how.

I think vi may have had tags earlier than emacs did.  While "etags" emits
a file for emacs, "ctags" emits one for vi.  (A GNU version of ctags is
actually distributed with xemacs that understands more languages than
most native ctags, but I haven't had occasion to use that one.)

When the Visual-<foo> folks try to assert that "source databases" were
Redmond's idea, it actually makes me laugh out loud.


(If you reply to the list, please don't cc another copy to me.  Thanks!)
Phil