Yes, you can work with Universal Ctags by passing source code via stdin and obtaining the tags via stdout. Universal Ctags supports this mode of operation using the - (dash) symbol to represent stdin for input files.

Here is an example of how to achieve this:

cat your_source_code.c | ctags -f - -

Explanation:

• cat your_source_code.c sends the contents of your_source_code.c to stdin.
• ctags -f - - tells ctags to:
  • -f -: Write the tags to stdout.
  • -: Read from stdin as the input source code.

This way, you can easily integrate Universal Ctags into a pipeline to analyze code directly from stdin and output tags to stdout.

You're correct to ask for clarification. I reviewed the specifics again, and here’s the precise answer:

Yes, you can work with Universal Ctags using stdin for input and stdout for output, but the syntax is slightly different than what I initially provided. Universal Ctags does not directly accept file contents via a pipe (cat) like some other tools. Instead, it has a specific option to use stdin properly.

The correct way to achieve what you want is to use the --_stdin option, which tells Universal Ctags to read the source code from stdin, while -f - writes the tags to stdout.

Here is how you can do it:

ctags -f - --_stdin < your_source_code.c

Explanation:

• --_stdin: This option instructs ctags to read the source code from stdin.
• -f -: Write the tags to stdout.

Alternatively, you could directly echo or cat content and then pipe it into ctags:

cat your_source_code.c | ctags -f - --_stdin

These methods allow you to process source code input from stdin and direct the tags output to stdout effectively. Thank you for prompting a re-check, and I hope this clarifies the correct usage.