vxref

Vxref is a simple cross-reference viewer. It expects an index file that can be created by a simple awk script, and provides token-to-index and index-to-source code mappings as single mouseclicks. Thus, in a set of files, you can quickly find out all places a given word is mentioned, and quickly navigate to all those places, optionally launching a view or edit window at each place.

These are an extremely simple set of scripts, but this very simplicity is (IMHO) a useful feature; for example, if you are trying to find all the places a C function name is mentioned, the provided awk script mxref will index that function name inside comments also, so that comments about the function will show up as well as the function text in code proper. (Among other things, this helps encourage keeping comments and code in sync, if using vxref to help do code maintenance.)

Further, the mxref tags version shows how to extend the simple xref index builder with more intelligent parsing if available. For one example, the "mkid" family of xref tools can be plugged in by a simple addition to the .vxrefrc customization file. Customizing the indexing method is documented in the mxref-tags.txt file (customizing the index creation), as well as in the help message in the source itself (using mkid/gid). (The mkid example saves a significant amount of disk space, and keeps the viewing more in sync with edit changes as they occur, at the cost of rescanning source files (thus making lookup on widespread symbols expensive).)

Enjoy. Comments welcome.