xref: /Universal-ctags/docs/output-format.rst (revision a4c7e51b02ffc6e2d564344a7de3eeec086d6fcb)
1.. _output-format:
2
3=============================================================================
4Output formats
5=============================================================================
6
7This section deals with individual output-format topics.
8
9The command line option ``--output-format=``\ *format* chooses an output format.
10Supported *format* are ``u-ctags``, ``e-ctags``, ``etags``, ``xref``, and ``json``.
11
12``u-ctags``, ``e-ctags``
13	``u-ctags`` is the default output format extending the Exuberant Ctags
14	output format (``e-ctags``).
15
16	``--format=1`` and ``--format=2`` are same as ``--output-format=e-ctags``
17	and ``--output-format=u-ctags`` respectively.
18
19	See man page :ref:`tags (5) <tags(5)>` for details. The difference between
20	``u-ctags`` and ``e-ctags`` are marked as "EXCEPTION".
21	Additional changes in Universal Ctags are described in
22	:ref:`changes_tags_file`.
23
24``etags``
25	Output format for Emacs etags.
26	``--output-format=etags`` can be abbreviated as ``-e``.
27
28	See `emacs git
29	<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/ETAGS.EBNF>`_ for
30	details.
31
32``xref``
33	A tabular, human-readable cross reference (xref) format.
34	``--output-format=xref`` can be abbreviated as ``-x``.
35
36	See section :ref:`output-xref` for details.
37
38``json``
39	JSON format.
40
41	See section :ref:`output-json` for details.
42
43*********
44
45.. toctree::
46	:maxdepth: 2
47
48	output-tags.rst
49	output-xref.rst
50	output-json.rst
51