In vi, how can I navigate to the function declaration?

Question

In Vi, if I am in the middle of a function, how can I navigate back to the function declaration?

Answer 1

I'd typically use {, which gets me to the beginning of the paragraph (which is often the beginning of the function too) in one keystroke, or sometimes I might have to use { two or more times, depending on how many blank lines I have in the function.

If I'm using C and ctags, then :tag functionname will get me to the function declaration from anywhere (Vim Book, p.79).

Answer 2

At the risk of stating the obvious, this may depend on the language and the coding style.  If the code is in C or C++ and the programmer followed the convention of beginning functions as

int
sum(int num1, int num2)
{

(or even with the return type on the same line as the function name), and then indenting all internal blocks, you could do a ?^{ search.  Alternatively (and this may be the best answer), [[ seems to be a shortcut for ?^{.  (]] seems to be a shortcut for /^{ –– no, not /^}.)

Even if the convention is

int sum(int num1, int num2) {

(consistently) you could search for ?^[a-zA-Z].*{$. For that matter, ?^[a-zA-Z] might be good enough.  Other languages, other coding conventions might require different answers.