Any program or trick to find the definition of a variable?

Question

Many times when I am watching others code I just want to find where and how a variable is defined. Normally what I do now is look for the type of the variable until I find t

Answer 1

Edit: OK, you say you're using C++. I'm editing my response. I would use the C preprocessor and then grep for the variable. It will appear in the first place.

cpp -I...(preprocessor options here) file.cpp | grep variable

The C preprocessor will join all the includes that the program uses, and the definition has to be before any usage of that variable in the file. Not a perfect thing, but without an IDE or a complete language description/managing tool, you only have the text.

Another option would be using ctags. It understands the C and C++ syntaxes (among others), and can be searched for variables and functions using command line tools, emacs and vi, among others.

Answer 2

If you work in Microsoft Visual Studio (which I think you could use for C++ as well, but would require working on a Windows workstation) there's an easily accessible right-click menu option for "Go to Definition...", which will take you to the definition of any currently marked variable, type or method.