ID Utils

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An 'ID database' is a binary file containing a list of file names, a list of tokens, and a sparse matrix indicating which tokens appear in which files.

With this database and some tools to query it, many text-searching tasks become simpler and faster.
For example, you can list all files that reference a particular `#include' file throughout a huge source hierarchy, search for all the memos containing references to a project, or automatically invoke an editor on all files containing references to some function or variable.
Anyone with a large software project to maintain, or a large set of text files to organize, can benefit from the ID utilities.

Although the name `ID' is short for `identifier', the ID utilities handle more than just identifiers; they also treat other kinds of tokens, most notably numeric constants, and the contents of certain character strings.

You can obtain the GNU idutils using one of the following methods:

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/idutils/ [via HTTP]

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/idutils/ [via FTP]

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/sources/idutils co idutils [via anonymous CVS]

A recent CVS build is also available on GNU sites and mirrors.

The official GNU idutils manual is available here: http://www.gnu.org/software/idutils/manual/


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Updated: $Date: 2006/08/05 08:20:36 $ $Author: sick_soul $