I use Ctags and vim to browse by C source code. Quite often than not I am in middle of a long function and want to quickly check the name of the function that the browsing. I use the "{" to jump to the start of the function that I am in and '' to jump back to location in the function that I came from.
Is there any easier way of doing this? Maybe there is a plugin that shows the function that we are currently in.
The simplest solution is to find the first unindented line that starts with a letter (by the way, this is exactly what diff -p does).
I'm sure I borrowed this trick somewhere, but I can't remember the origin. Anyway, here it is:
" '\p' to show what function we are in (like 'diff -p')
nmap <leader>p <cmd>echo getline(search('^[[:alpha:]$_]', 'bcnW'))<CR>
Of course, this is neither perfect nor accurate yet often it works right.
If you don't mind a plugin, context.vim pins current function definition on the first line of the window. (Thanks @Vivian De Smedt, I couldn't find the link myself).
Another suggestion would be something like tagbar, which displays the code structure in a panel.
If you use vim-airline, and tagbar together, you can show the current function in the statusline with:
let g:airline#extensions#tagbar#enabled = 1
[[and]]for a bunch of filetypes; I added this as a fallback if a filetype doesn't have a pattern defined, thanks! – Martin Tournoij Jul 06 '22 at 19:52