Other Tools

This chapter describes some support tools that work with the other ID programs.

• GNU Emacs Interface: Using gid.el
• Fid: List identifiers in a file.
• Idx: Extract identifiers from source file.

GNU Emacs Interface

The source distribution comes with a file named `gid.el'. This is a GNU emacs interface to the gid tool. If you put the file where emacs can find it (somewhere in your EMACSLOADPATH) and put (autoload 'gid "gid" nil t) in your `.emacs' file, you will be able to invoke the gid function using M-x gid.

This function prompts you with the word the cursor is on. If you want to search for a different pattern, simply delete the line and type the pattern of interest.

It runs gid in a *compilation* buffer, so the normal next-error function can be used to visit all the places the identifier is found (see section `Compilation' in The GNU Emacs Manual).

Fid

Command: fid [-f<file>] file1 [file2]

-f<file>

Look in the named database.

file1

List the identifiers contained in file1 according to the database.

file2

If a second file is given, list only the identifiers both files have in common.

The fid program provides an inverse query. Instead of listing files containing some identifier, it lists the identifiers found in a file.

Idx

Command: idx [-s<directory>] [-r<directory>] [-S<scanarg>] files...

The -s, -r, and -S arguments to idx are identical to the same arguments on mkid (see section Mkid Command Line Options).

The idx command is more of a test frame for scanners than a tool designed to be independently useful. It takes the same scanner arguments as mkid, but rather than building a database, it prints the identifiers found to stdout, one per line. You can use it to try out a scanner on a sample file to make sure it is extracting the identifiers you believe it should extract.