Any C/C++ definition generators for Vim?

Question

Vim is my daily driver for C++ (this would apply to C as well). As it stands, I use coc-vim with coc-clangd for code analysis.

For example, when working with C++, I place my declarations in a header file and yank/paste declarations from the header files into the source files. I then have to prepend every definition with a ClassName::, but after the return type, which is a bit annoying.

Does anyone know of a plugin that can create definitions for you in an appropriate source file?

Answer 1

Here is a vimscript function that creates a definition based on the current line declaration:

function! CreateDefinition() abort
  let state=winsaveview()
  yank
  normal! [{?class\s\+\zs\h\+"cyiw
  call winrestview(state)
  edit %:p:r.cpp
  $normal! ]p
  substitute /\~\?\h\+(/\=@c . '::' . submatch(0)/
  substitute /;/\r{\r}\r/
endfunction

• let state=winsaveview used to be able to restore the state of the windows after the few search that will be needed to capture the class name into the register c
• yank copy the declaration
• normal! [{?class\s\+\zs\h\+"cyiw search the class name and yank it into the register c
  • [{ search the outer {
  • ?class\s\+\zs\h\+ search the class name
  • "cyiw yank the class name into the register c
• call winrestview(state) restore the cursor position
• edit %:p:r.cpp open the cpp buffer (assuming the .cpp is next to the .h file in the file system)
• $normal! ]p paste the declaration at the end of the buffer with indentation adjusted
• substitute /\~\?\h\+(/\=@c . '::' . submatch(0)/ add the class name classifier
• substitute /;/\r{\r}\r/ add an empty body

Remark: For cpp editing you could be interested by the lh-cpp plugin from @LucHermitte.

Answer 2

Note: I'm under the impression I've already given these information here or on SO... IOW, other answers and solutions may be available there.

I have the :GOTOIMPL (and :MOVEIMPL) commands in lh-cpp that generates empty function definitions from function declarations -- but one at the time.

The implementation in the main branch has several limitations (no support for templates, C array parameters (who use them anyway? ;), ...). This initial implementation is closely related to a 2 decades old tip in vim.wikia. It contains a lot of :substitute/regex calls to handle comments, parameters, extract return types, function names, scopes (ns::ns::cls::cls...), ignore some keywords (virtual, override, static...) and so on. That's why I won't describe it here.

The improved version resides in a gotoimpl_with_libclang branch, it depends on another plugin of mine (vim-clang; branch V2Upgrade), which in turn depends on the Python bindings of libclang. Most of the complex cases are now handled. I've haven't tried (yet) to support trailing return types though.

PS: At the moment, the v2 of MOVEIMPL command has a few issues that I haven't taken the time to tackle. (I'd like to extract the formatting used in function declarations to reproduce it).