This article continues my last blog.

Source Navigation

cscope and ctags

Cscope and ctags can assist you in when browsing source codes. You can use ctags with Vim plugins like tagbar or taglist, and Vim also supports cscope jumping. Both cscope and ctags are good alternative to commercial software like Source Insight, Scitools Understand and Crystal Flow, and they are always available in Linux and Windows.

Searcher

grep and grepWin

Grep is an essential tool in Linux system. And if you are working on Windows, you can consider using the alternative grepWin, it has a decent UI as well.

Ag

Ag is called the silver searcher, and can be integrated with Vim using ag.vim. I find ag very fast when searching codes, because perhaps it is smart in its searching, like ignoring files flagged in .gitignore. I will recommend you to use it instead of grep tools for source codes. For general regex search, using grep instead.

everything

Everything works only on Windows. Well, if you read my posts, you will find that I prefer cross-platform tools, that is because sometimes I have to work on both platforms (Linux and Windows), and I enjoy having the same experience. However, everything is so great tool that I cannot ignore it here. It is super-fast when searching NTFS files, in a blink of eyes, but it only searches by file name. You will find it very useful when you try to find a file that buried in SOME direcoty that you have forgot.

Offline Documentation Browser

Zeal

Zeal is a quite new tool, featuring offline documentation browsing. Mac programmers always find Dash indispensable, now zeal is an open source alternative to Dash and works on both Linux and Windows. Actually, zeal uses api docsets from Dash I suppose, and it now supports 198 docsets. Zeal can be integrated with Vim with zeavim, and you can cross-reference from your source code to its api documentation easily with your defined hot keys.