28.4.1.3 Searching and Replacing with Identifiers

The commands in this section perform various search and replace operations either on identifiers themselves or on files that reference them.

M-?

Find all the references for the identifier at point.

M-x xref-query-replace-in-results RET regexp RET replacement RET

Interactively replace regexp with replacement in the names of all the identifiers shown in the *xref* buffer.

M-x tags-search RET regexp RET

Search for regexp through the files in the selected tags table.

M-x tags-query-replace RET regexp RET replacement RET

Perform a query-replace-regexp on each file in the selected tags table.

M-x fileloop-continue

Restart one of the last 2 commands above, from the current location of point.

M-? finds all the references for the identifier at point, prompting for the identifier as needed, with completion. Depending on the current backend (see Find Identifier References), the command may prompt even if it finds a valid identifier at point. When invoked with a prefix argument, it always prompts for the identifier. (If you want it to prompt always, customize the value of the variable xref-prompt-for-identifier to t; or set it to nil to prompt only if there’s no usable identifier at point.) The command then presents the *xref* buffer with all the references to the identifier, showing the file name and the line where the identifier is referenced. The XREF mode commands are available in this buffer, see Commands Available in the *xref* Buffer.

If the value of the variable xref-auto-jump-to-first-xref is t, xref-find-references automatically jumps to the first result and selects the window where it is displayed. If the value is show, the first result is shown, but the window showing the *xref* buffer is left selected. If the value is move, the first result is selected in the *xref* buffer, but is not shown. The default value is nil, which just shows the results in the *xref* buffer, but doesn’t select any of them.

M-x xref-query-replace-in-results reads a regexp to match identifier names and a replacement string, just like ordinary M-x query-replace-regexp. It then performs the specified replacement in the names of the matching identifiers in all the places in all the files where these identifiers are referenced. This is useful when you rename your identifiers as part of refactoring. This command should be invoked in the *xref* buffer generated by M-?.

M-x tags-search reads a regexp using the minibuffer, then searches for matches in all the files in the selected tags table, one file at a time. It displays the name of the file being searched so you can follow its progress. As soon as it finds an occurrence, tags-search returns. This command requires tags tables to be available (see Tags Tables).

Having found one match with tags-search, you probably want to find all the rest. M-x fileloop-continue resumes the tags-search, finding one more match. This searches the rest of the current buffer, followed by the remaining files of the tags table.

M-x tags-query-replace performs a single query-replace-regexp through all the files in the tags table. It reads a regexp to search for and a string to replace with, just like ordinary M-x query-replace-regexp. It searches much like M-x tags-search, but repeatedly, processing matches according to your input. See Query Replace, for more information on query replace.

You can control the case-sensitivity of tags search commands by customizing the value of the variable tags-case-fold-search. The default is to use the same setting as the value of case-fold-search (see Lax Matching During Searching).

It is possible to get through all the files in the tags table with a single invocation of M-x tags-query-replace. But often it is useful to exit temporarily, which you can do with any input event that has no special query replace meaning. You can resume the query replace subsequently by typing M-x fileloop-continue; this command resumes the last tags search or replace command that you did. For instance, to skip the rest of the current file, you can type M-> M-x fileloop-continue.

Note that the commands described above carry out much broader searches than the xref-find-definitions family. The xref-find-definitions commands search only for definitions of identifiers that match your string or regexp. The commands xref-find-references, tags-search, and tags-query-replace find every occurrence of the identifier or regexp, as ordinary search commands and replace commands do in the current buffer.

As an alternative to xref-find-references and tags-search, you can run grep as a subprocess and have Emacs show you the matching lines one by one. See Searching with Grep under Emacs.