Navigation, Code navigation, Symbol navigation – Slick EDIT V3.3 User Manual

Page 98: Symbol nav, Igation

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Navigation

There are two types of navigation in SlickEdit

®

Core:

Code Navigation

, which provides in-depth symbol

navigation and structure matching, and

Cursor Navigation

, which pertains to more simple movements

within text and files.

Code Navigation

Some of the most powerful features in SlickEdit

®

Core are its code navigation methods, particularly

Sym-

bol Navigation

. These features allow you to navigate your code the way you think about it, rather than just

as a set of files. If you aren’t using the code navigation features in SlickEdit

®

Core, then you aren’t getting

the most out of the editor.

Symbol Navigation

Symbol Navigation allows you to jump from a symbol to its definition or to a reference with a single key-
stroke. A pushed bookmark is set, allowing you to return to the symbol with another keystroke. You can
chain a series of these navigation operations together, creating a stack of locations. Then pop your way
back to the starting location.

To navigate between symbols use the following operations:

Go to Definition - To quickly move the cursor from a symbol to its definition, pushing a bookmark in

the process, press Ctrl+Dot. Alternatively, click Navigate

Go to Definition or use the push_tag

command.

Go to Reference - To create a list of references and optionally jump to the first one, pushing a book-

mark in the process, press Ctrl+/. Alternatively, click Navigate

Go to Reference or use the

push_ref command.

Pop Bookmark - To pop the bookmark and return to the previous location, press Ctrl+Comma. Altern-

atively, click Search

Pop Bookmark or use the pop_bookmark command. See

Pushed Bookmarks

for more information about working with bookmarks.

When you first call these operations, if a tag file does not exist for the current file, it will be built (see

Build-

ing Tag Files

).

Tip

Procs and prototypes - In C and C++, navigating from a symbol to its definition will prompt

you to select whether you want to go to the prototype or the function. You can tell SlickEdit

®

Core to always go to one or the other by setting one of the options Go to Definition navigates
to symbol definition (proc)
or Go to Definition navigates to symbol declaration (proto).
To set these options, click Window

Preferences, expand SlickEdit and click General in the

tree, then double-click the File Extension Setup setting. On the Extension Options dialog, se-
lect the extension you want to affect from the Extension drop-down list, then select the

Context

Code Navigation

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