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How does this compare to cscope[0] ? edit: or ctags[1] ? --- [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cscope [1] http://en.wikip

• astine 13y ago
  cscope and ctags are language syntax dependent searching tools for c-like programming languages. They let you search specifically for all instances of a function names 'foo' for example. Ack is instead just a normal pattern matcher like grep except that it has some cleverness by which it knows not to search certain file types and directories. It will return all lines which match a string rather than just variable names or functions.
  • bch 13y ago
    cscope lets you search for arbitrary text strings and egrep patterns as well. "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!)"[0] Exuberant Ctags supports 41 languages[1], incl. javascript, Tcl, Ruby, TeX, awk, etc. I was wondering if there are obvious ack killer features or areas where it's remarkably superior. [0] http://cscope.sourceforge.net/ http://cscope.sourceforge.net/ [1] http://ctags.sourceforge.net/languages.html http://ctags.sourceforge.net/languages.html
    • petdance 13y ago
      They solve different problems. Ctags and cscope index a corpus of source code, usually tied into another tool, like Ctrl-] in vim. ack searches the files every time.