Exuberant Ctags can't work fine on OSX

Question

I want use Ctags for Lua.

Ctags doesn't support Lua, so I found a command:

ctags --langdef=MYLUA --langmap=MYLUA:.lua --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*(\w+):(\w+).*$/\2/f/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*[0-9]+.*$/\1/e/" --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*(\w+)\.(\w+).*$/\2/f/" --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*(\w+)\s*\(.*$/\1/f/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*\{.*$/\1/e/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*module\s+\"(\w+)\".*$/\1/m,module/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*module\s+\"[a-zA-Z0-9._]+\.(\w+)\".*$/\1/m,module/" --languages=MYLUA --excmd=number -R .

It's too long, or you can see a shorter sample only for lua functions.

ctags --langdef=MYLUA --langmap=MYLUA:.lua --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*(\w+)\s*\(.*$/\1/f/" --languages=MYLUA --excmd=number -R .

Both of the two works fine on Windows.

On OSX, there was no error, but the tags file is empty.

PS:I used Exuberant Ctags v5.8, not default ctags on OSX.

Here's a test Lua code for ctags.

function f1()
end

function c.f2()
end

function c:f3()
end

Answer 1

The exuberant ctags version that you can find at https://github.com/fishman/ctags appears to have native lua support. Have you tried that instead?

Answer 2

Finally, i fixed it.

1. '\w' can't use in this regex('\w' isn't OK, too), i don't know why. I use '[^\s:>]' instead of '\w'.
2. '\1' or '\2' must escape to '\\1' or '\\2', but '\s' is OK. Don't know why, too.

Now, the command change to

ctags --langdef=MYLUA --langmap=MYLUA:.lua --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*([^\s:.]+):([^\s:.]+).*$/\\2/f/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*([^\s:.]+)\s*=\s*[0-9]+.*$/\\1/e/" --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*([^\s:.]+)\.([^\s:.]+).*$/\\2/f/" --regex-MYLUA="/^.*\s*function\s*([^\s:.]+)\s*\(.*$/\\1/f/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*([^\s:.]+)\s*=\s*\{.*$/\\1/e/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*module\s+\"([^\s:.]+)\".*$/\\1/m,module/" --regex-MYLUA="/^\s*module\s+\"[a-zA-Z0-9._]+\.([^\s:.]+)\".*$/\\1/m,module/" --languages=MYLUA --excmd=number -R .

and this is OK.