2. The [ \t;{]* is not quite right because it picks up stuff like "nudelfunction fireball"

I looked at it again and came up with (defvar fume-function-name-regexp-javascript (concat "^\\(" "\\|" "\\([^/]\\|/[^/\\*]\\|/\\*\\([^\\*]\\|\\*[^/]\\)*\\*/\\)[ \t;{]" "\\)" "function[ \t]+" "\\([a-zA-Z_\\$][a-zA-Z0-9_\\$]*\\)" ;; "[ \t\n]*(" ) "Expression to get JavaScript function names.") This regexp also handles your case d by skipping over C-style comments. It's still not perfect though: The function name should be followed by an opening parenthesis as in the comment in last line of the regexp. However, I did not get that to work right away.