How to find every file that includes a given function?

Question

I am trying to list all of the files that include a function, e.g., matrixCal.

How can I to do this in linux?

Answer 1

Would grep be ok?

grep -R matrixCal /location/of/your/code

Answer 2

You might be interested in the program ack. It's specifically designed for searching through source code directories and returning useful things in an easy to read format. Basically it does the same thing as grep but in a much more friendly format.

Answer 3

The traditional approach is to create an index of function and variable definitions for your source code, and use your editor to search this index. The traditional indexing command is called ctags and creates a file called tags that can be used in vi. Emacs comes with a similar etags command (the file is called TAGS).

For example, for a C source tree, here is how you might generate the TAGS file for Emacs:

find -type f -name '*.[hc]' -exec etags {} +

For a large source tree checked out under Subversion, here are two refinements: ignore .svn directories, and cope with file hierarchies that are so long that the command line length limit would be exceeded (resulting in a truncated file because each successive invocation of etags would rewrite the file from scratch).

: >TAGS
find -type d -name .svn -prune -o \
     -type f -name '*.[hc]' -exec etags -a {} +

Then, in Emacs, run M-x visit-tags-table once and select the TAGS file. Put your cursor over the word matrixCal, and press M-. (find-tag) to jump to the definition (opening the file containing the definition if necessary). To iterate between occurrences, run M-x tags-search, enter ^matrixCal$ to go to one occurrence, and use M-, (tags-loop-continue) to jump to the next occurrence. In the TAGS buffer, M-x occur RET matrixCal RET will give you an overview of where the symbol is used.