idutils and Python

[sjdevnull at yahoo.com]

Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote:
> On 21 Aug 2006 22:56:13 -0700, sjdevnull at yahoo.com <sjdevnull at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > What exactly are you trying to accomplish?  If you want to index
> > function/class names, variables, etc then you should take a look at
> > "exuberant ctags" http://ctags.sourceforge.net53 --although it started
> > off as a C indexer, it has excellent Python support, it's free, and as
> > a bonus its indices are well supported from inside major editors (vim,
> > emacs, etc) so you can easily follow code flow, find function/class
> > definitions, etc.
>
>
> Sorry for not being clear enough. I want the following:
>
> a) have my editor go to the point where a function/whatever is defined

That's usually ctags/etags

> b) see all places where a function/whatever is used.

That's usually cscope  http://cscope.sourceforge.net/ but I've not
tried to use it with Python before; from the web page it looks like it
may be worth a spin:
"The fuzzy parser supports C, but is flexible enough to be useful for
C++ and Java, and for use as a generalized 'grep database' (use it to
browse large text documents!"

The vim integration is very nice.  It has emacs integration too, but I
haven't used it and can't comment on how good it is.

> I think the wish "do not use grep, just look at the index file, and
> immediately display all matches"  is reasonable and probably other
> Python coders had thought about it before. But I am wondering if I am
> missing something obvious, as most people seem to be very happy with
> exuberant ctags.

I am usually happy with grep, but we only have a medium-large size
project (320,000 lines of Python code); I can imagine on very large
codebases that would be too slow to be practical.