Ubuntu: ctags error: “ctags: Unknown option: -p”

Question

I am trying to create tags using ctags and getting the error

ctags: Unknown option: -p

There is a similar question asked before. But i could not understand that solution. I'm very sorry for posting the same question again.

I am trying to generate tags for C and C++ files.

OS: ubuntu 10.04LTS

ctags version : 5.8 (Exuberant ctags)

$which ctags : /usr/bin/ctags

There is a .ctags conf file in my home directory, but it is empty.

I tried to generate the tags using the below command

ctags -append=yes -R /home/jabez/mycodedir

I am using the "-append" option because i want to append the tags generated from other directories to the same tags file.

Installation procedure i followed:

1. ./configure --disable-etags
2. make
3. make install

Please help me how i can fix the problem.

Answer 1

The problem is that you use -append with a single dash, it should be a double dash: --append.

With single dash, the argument is parsed as a series of one-letter arguments: -a -p -p -e -n -d.