Vim Notes - Tags Fuzzy Finder

Vim Notes stores the list of known tags in a dedicated file, named tags. Unfortunately, its format isn't compatible with standard tags-files.

This note shows how to create a second tags-file compatible with CtrlP, a fuzzy finder for VIM. In the video below I created a new note with tags and then I recalled the note from the CtrlP fuzzy prompt.

Tweet of Seve_py/1542594453046706177

Generating the proper tags-file requires ctags binary for Windows, which can be downloaded here. In my main .vimrc, I enabled the option that checks if another .vimrc exists in the current folder.

   set exrc " source folder specific .vimrc

This configuration is then sourced and it sets ctags.exe to run when VIM opens or when a buffer will be saved to a disk file.

    ...
    let g:homedirw32 = fnamemodify('~',':p')

    "" don't show these files when :SearchNotes
    set wildignore+=*.pickle,tags,*.ctags,notetags,*.ini
    set autochdir
    let g:notes_tagsindex="tags"


    "" CTRLP config
    "" CTRLP tags for vim-notes
    set tags=notetags
    set autochdir

    if has('win32') || has('win64')
    let g:ctrlp_user_command = 'dir %s /-n /b /s /a-d'  " Windows
    endif

    let g:ctrlp_show_hidden = 0
    let g:ctrlp_use_readdir = 1

    "" run ctags.exe when VIM opens or after a buffer has been saved 
    augroup notes
        au BufWritePost,VimEnter *.txt 
                    \   silent execute '!'.g:homedirw32.'\\bin\\ctags.exe -R -f notetags --options='.expand("%:p:h").'\\Notes.ctags' 
    augroup END

    

The ctags options file (Notes.ctags) defines the regular expression that matches all the tags inside my notes.

    --exclude=.*
    --exclude=*.ini
    --exclude=*.ctags
    --langdef=Notes
    --map-Notes=+.txt
    --kinddef-Notes=t,tag,tag
    --regex-Notes=/(^|\s)@([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)/\2/t