sorting of results to show references first

[vjohansen]

Hi

When there is many results from dump-jump-go the dropdown shows multiple results. These seem to have a "random" ordering (maybe the file structure ordering).

Most of the time you want a definition not a reference so I think the results should be sorted to show references first:

• classes
• functions
• the rest

This could be done the dumb way with regexes. If you search for xyz then classes will look like "class xyz". For functions: "def xyz" (python), "(void|int|string|other return types) xyz" (C#).

[jacktasia]

Thanks for opening this! In theory I absolutely agree with what you have here and it would be better to have it this way. That said, in practice I very rarely find myself needing to jump to anything that is common enough to have more than a few matches (or actually any). Although I understand this could be more a reflection of the programming language and/or the style of the programmer.

To implement this we would have to re-apply each set/type of regular expression against the result set to re-group the results for sorting this, because for speed we concatenate all regular expressions together, so we only have a single regex search on a project per jump. This would certainly add overhead, but I am not exactly sure how much since it's probably pretty safe to assume a result set will be relatively small compared a project/repo which could be huge.

Alternatively you might consider using a mixture of dumb-jump-go-prefer-external or dumb-jump-functions-only

Long story short, I'd be happy to consider a PR that implemented this, but I am unlikely to add this myself. Although I'd be happy to discuss further if I am missing anything. I'll leave this ticket open for further discussion. Thanks again!

[vjohansen]

Thanks for the comment. I will use dumb-jump a bit more to see if it is an issue in practice

[VladasZ]

In my opinion the sorting feature is a must. In most cases user wants to find function or class definition and the results containing these keywords should be first. I would even consider not just sort, but even hide the results which don't match the regex. That is why in most IDE's this feature called jump to definition. I've encountered a problem connected with this issue in my project. I have a C++ project in which i use Log() macro to print debug messages and information. When i try to find the definition of it with dump-jump it just shows me all the calls of this macro, and the actual definition

#define Log()

is in the middle of this huge list. I need to scroll down around 50 results to find the definition. It makes dump-jump almost useless. It is faster to just gper "#define Log" in such cases.

I have another great example why this feature is a must. In python:

The first results is not a function, not even the same word but just the same symbols inside a string 😕

Maybe it is possible to add some custom regex which is nil by default and don't affect the performance?

[jacktasia]

@VladasZ Thanks for the report! Seems like it's either:

1. It looks like the variable regex is bad it should only be matching os = and not -sos=. Try doing (setq dumb-jump-functions-only t) and try it again. If it then works as expected please open a new issue for the bad variable regex and I'll fix it.

2. or less likely the regexes are all failing (finding no results) and dumb-jump-fallback-search is kicking in, which by default will just look for the symbol. You can test this theory by doing (setq dumb-jump-fallback-search nil) and trying your search again.

Thanks for your help!

[VladasZ]

@jacktasia Yeah. (setq dumb-jump-functions-only t) helped with Python. I should have checked it before posting. Thank you. I've also tried (dumb-jump-go-prefer-external), but C++ definitions and classes are still in the exact middle of a huge list:

[jacktasia]

@VladasZ Thanks for the info. I can't reproduce your python issue though. What searcher/version are you using? The c++ issue is definitely real. I think our rules are have too much going on at once. We probably want to break them up more. Please create a new issue for just that if you have a moment. Thanks!

[VladasZ]

@jacktasia melpa is currently down. I will investigate this issue after it is back to normal.

[VladasZ]

@jacktasia The bug occurs only if there is = sign after the sequence + The Silver Searcher is installed. Interesting that after uninstalling The Silver Searcher the bug still persists. I've tested it on macOS and Ubuntu and had the same result.

[jacktasia]

@VladasZ Nice catch! This definitely means there's an issue with the regex itself. This will allow me to fix it pretty easily and add a new not test case for this. Thanks!