Hi, I've been unable to find any reference to the problem I'm having with etags and included files, so I'm forced to assume, strange as it might seem, that I am actually the first one to report this problem. To summarize: Attempting to use 'find-tag' fails with the error message "Bad TAGS file" if the TAGS file being read includes other TAGS files (by using etags -i). A TAGS file created with the etags -i option may look like this: ^L config.h,418 #define TIME_WITH_SYS_TIME 14,445 #define PACKAGE 56,1501 #define VERSION 59,1556 ^L src/TAGS,include ^L tests/TAGS,include As soon as the 2nd ^L is processed, the error will occur. The reason is that the regexp being used to match a valid file specification after the ^L expects a number after the comma, and does not accept the 'include'. The regexp is defined in /usr/lib/xemacs-21.4.1/lisp/etags.el.gz, line 478, as: (defconst tags-file-pattern "^\f\n\\(.+\\),[0-9]+\n") defining it instead as: (defconst tags-file-pattern "^\f\n\\(.+\\),\\(\\([0-9]+\\)\\|include\\)\n") would handle the include pattern as well. At least, that works for me. Funny, the line right after this says: ;; #### Should make it work with the `include' directive! (defun add-to-tag-completion-table () So apparently it was known as a problem to the author of that line, but he or she didn't want to fix it by changing 'tags-file-pattern', so perhaps there's some underlying issue I'm not aware of. I'm not an ELisp hacker, I just traced it in the debugger and saw that it was crapping out apparently only because the input wasn't matching this regexp, but what do I know. The TAGS file that caused the problem was originally created as a result of running 'make tags' on a Makefile built from automake/autoconf, so I would think this would be a common problem. I'm running XEmacs 21.4 (patch 1) "Copyleft" [Lucid] (i386-debian-linux, Mule) of Tue May 22 2001 on eeyore configured using `configure --with-sound=native --with_menubars=lucid --with_scrollbars=lucid --with_dialogs=athena '--cflags=-O2 -g -Wall ' --with-x11 --extra-verbose --with-site-lisp --statedir=/var/lib --infodir=/usr/share/info/xemacs-21.4.1 --prefix=/usr --error-checking=none --debug=no --const-is-losing=no --dynamic --without-postgresql --with-gpm=no --docdir=/usr/lib/xemacs-21.4.1/i386-debian-linux/mule/ --with-mule --with-canna=no --with-wnn=no --with-xim=xlib --with-xfs '--package-path=~/.xemacs:~/.xemacs/packages::/usr/share/xemacs21/packages:/usr/share/xemacs21/mule-packages:/usr/share/xemacs21/site-packages' i386-debian-linux' I am running debian woody/testing, kernel 2.4.1 on i686. Running 'etags -V' outputs "etags (GNU Emacs 21.4.1)". =wl -- willy.lee(a)page44.com Page 44 Studios "Avenge In Blood becomes the animal code that staggers the country!!"