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elisp-refs

Coverage Status MELPA

elisp-refs is an intelligent code search for Emacs lisp.

It can find references to functions, macros or variables. Unlike a dumb text search, elisp-refs actually parses the code, so it's never confused by comments or variables with the same name as functions.

screenshot

This is particularly useful for finding all the places a function is used, or finding examples of usage.

Interested readers may enjoy my blog post: Searching A Million Lines Of Lisp.

Installation

Install from MELPA (recommended) or just add elisp-refs to your load-path.

Commands available

  • elisp-refs-function (find function calls)
  • elisp-refs-macro (find macro calls)
  • elisp-refs-variable (find variable references)
  • elisp-refs-special (find special form calls)
  • elisp-refs-symbol (find all references to a symbol)

These command search all the files currently loaded in your Emacs instance.

If called with a prefix, you can limit search results to specific directories. For example:

C-u M-x elisp-refs-macro RET pcase RET ~/.emacs.d/elpa/magit-20160927.510 RET

will search for uses of pcase in magit:

filtering screenshot

Semantic analysis

elisp-refs has street smarts: given (defun foo (bar) (baz)), it understands that bar is a variable and baz is a function.

elisp-refs understands the following forms:

  • defun defsubst defmacro cl-defun
  • lambda
  • let let*
  • funcall apply
  • sharp quoted expressions (e.g. #'some-func)

Limitations

elisp-refs understands elisp special forms, and a few common macros. However, it cannot understand arbitrary macros.

Therefore elisp-refs will assume that (other-macro (foo bar)) is a function call to foo. If this is incorrect, you may wish to use the command elisp-refs-symbol to find all references to the foo symbol.

If other-macro is a common macro, please consider submitting a patch to elisp-refs--function-p to make elisp-refs smarter.

elisp-refs also does not support indirect calls.

;; Since we do a simple syntax tree walk, this isn't treated as a
;; call to foo.
(let ((x (symbol-function 'foo)))
  (funcall x))

;; Similarly, indirect function calls are not treated as
;; function calls.
(defun call-func (x)
  (funcall x))
(call-func 'foo)

;; However, if you use sharp quoting, elisp-refs knows it's a function
reference!
(call-func #'foo)

Running tests

You can run the tests with:

$ cask install
$ cask exec ert-runner

Performance

elisp-refs is CPU-intensive elisp and has been carefully optimised. You can run the benchmark script with:

$ cask install
$ ./bench.sh

New features are carefully measured to ensure performance does not get worse.

See elisp-refs-bench.el for more details.

Alternative Projects

xref-find-references: This command is included in Emacs 25.1, but it's based on a text search. It is confused by comments and strings, and cannot distinguish between functions and variables.

xrefs-find-references is also line oriented, so it does not show the whole sexp that matched your search. Since it requires text files, it doesn't search built-in .el.gz files.

TAGS: It is possible to record function references in TAGS files. Whilst universal-ctags (formerly known as exuberant-ctags) does provide the ability to find references, it is not supported in its lisp parser.

etags, the TAGS implementation shipped with Emacs, cannot find references (to my knowledge).

el-search allows you to search for arbitrary forms in elisp files. It's slower, but a much more general tool. Its design greatly influenced elisp-refs.

elisp-slime-nav finds definitions, not references. It's a great complementary tool.