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Asked: 2026-05-19T11:22:30+00:00

I know that Vim has sophisticated support for tags but I am struggling to

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I know that Vim has sophisticated support for tags but I am struggling to get them to work with JavaScript and TCL.

I am using Vim 7.2.330 under Ubuntu Lucid, a standard Vim install and standard Exuberant CTags install.

I wish to keep my tags in a file called ~/.vimtags/tags

I have included the tags file in my vimrc file set tags+=$HOME."/vimtags/tags".

I have run the following command from the base code directory:

ctags-exuberant -f ~/.vimtags/tags -h ".js" --totals=yes --tag-relative=yes --fields=+akst -R

I also have the following in my .ctags file – I saw an article somewhere online that said you should add these to make it compatible with modern JavaScript.

--langdef=js
--langmap=js:.js
--regex-js=/([A-Za-z0-9._$]+)[ \t]*[:=][ \t]*\{/\1/,object/
--regex-js=/([A-Za-z0-9._$()]+)[ \t]*[:=][ \t]*function[ \t]*\(/\1/,function/
--regex-js=/function[ \t]+([A-Za-z0-9._$]+)[ \t]*\(([^)])\)/\1/,function/
--regex-js=/([A-Za-z0-9._$]+)[ \t]*[:=][ \t]*\[/\1/,array/
--regex-js=/([^= ]+)[ \t]*=[ \t]*[^"]'[^']*/\1/,string/
--regex-js=/([^= ]+)[ \t]*=[ \t]*[^']"[^"]*/\1/,string/

When I load up Vim, the tags file definitely gets loaded. A set tags? shows that the tag file has been included.

However, whenever I CTRL-] over a keyword, it always says that there are no tags.

Please could you share how you set up Vim tags with JavaScript, and also show how you use the tag system? It seems to be a great feature of Vim, if only I could get it working.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    However, whenever I CTRL-] over a keyword, it always says that there are no tags.

    tags are not supposed to work on keywords, they work on symbols you have defined (functions, variables, constants, etc) in the indexed files. So if you are trying on a Javascript keyword it won’t work. It won’t work on a function from a library either, if you have not included the JS library to your tag file (using ctags -a for example).

    If you want to be sure what has been indexed and what you have access to with <C-]>, you can simply open your “tag” file, and see what’s in there.

    :e ~/.vimtags/tags

    You should see a header with information relative to the tag file format, followed by a tag list, which include the tag name followed by a file path, a line number, and a character identifying the type of tag.

    If it has some content, it should work for the listed symbols.

    Regarding your ctag setup, it looks fine in my opinion.

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