#381 C++ Return type on separate line is discarded

[Majenko Technologies]

Functions with the return type on a separate line lose the return type.

Example:

int
foo() {
}

gives you:

foo t.ino /^foo() {$/;" kind:f line:2 signature:()

whereas it really should give you:

foo t.ino   /^int foo() {$/;"   kind:f  line:2  signature:()

Or at least an optional field:

foo t.cpp   /^foo() {$/;"   kind:f  line:2  signature:() return:int

[Masatake YAMATO]

/^int foo() {$/

ctags should not give this.
A tool reading tags file like vim recognizes the substring between / and / as a regular expression pattern. ^ int foo() {$ doesn't match any substring in the original input.
I'm not sure that the tool can handle ^ int\nfoo() {$. However, I guess it cannot. At least the new pattern including \n may break compatiblities.

foo t.cpp /^foo() {$/;" kind:f line:2 signature:() return:int

The tool can handle this one well. Unofficial fork maintained at https://ctags.io does what you expect:

[yamato@slave]~/var/ctags-github% ./ctags --version
./ctags --version
Universal Ctags 0.0.0(2baef0d3), Copyright (C) 2015 Universal Ctags Team
Universal Ctags is derived from Exuberant Ctags.
Exuberant Ctags 5.8, Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Darren Hiebert
  Compiled: Nov 10 2019, 11:25:16
  URL: https://ctags.io/
  Optional compiled features: +wildcards, +regex, +iconv, +option-directory, +xpath, +json, +interactive, +sandbox, +yaml, +aspell, +packcc
[yamato@slave]~/var/ctags-github% cat /tmp/foo.c 
cat /tmp/foo.c 
int
foo() {
}
[yamato@slave]~/var/ctags-github% ./ctags -o - --fields=+s /tmp/foo.c
./ctags -o - --fields=+s /tmp/foo.c
foo /tmp/foo.c  /^foo() {$/;"   f   language:C  typeref:typename:int
[yamato@slave]~/var/ctags-github% ./ctags -o - --fields=+S /tmp/foo.c
./ctags -o - --fields=+S /tmp/foo.c
foo /tmp/foo.c  /^foo() {$/;"   f   language:C  typeref:typename:int    signature:()

typeref is used instad of return.

[Majenko Technologies]

Great, thanks. I shall look at ctags.io. FYI, I'm using ctags to build a list of available functions in a GUI and need the return type. Also the same information is used to automatically populate a header file with function prototypes, and without the return type it breaks the code.