I've looked into the etags format and have been happy to discover that there is actually a specification for it. There is a bug in a comment though suggesting a position is the char position followed by the line position, however it seems to be the other way around. I've looked a bit more in the grammar, but other than that it seems to be fine. In GNU Emacs 27.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.22, cairo version 1.17.3) of 2020-08-28 built on juergen Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12010000 System Description: Arch Linux Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Configured using: 'configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib --localstatedir=/var --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-xft --with-wide-int --with-modules --with-cairo --with-harfbuzz 'CFLAGS=-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -fno-plt' CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 LDFLAGS=-Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro,-z,now' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG CAIRO SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE HARFBUZZ M17N_FLT LIBOTF ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS LIBSYSTEMD JSON PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP Important settings: value of $LC_MESSAGES: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs text-property-search time-date subr-x seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader cl-loaddefs cl-lib sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting cairo move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 45038 9719) (symbols 48 6003 1) (strings 32 15474 1855) (string-bytes 1 504110) (vectors 16 10091) (vector-slots 8 130017 12348) (floats 8 19 39) (intervals 56 196 0) (buffers 1000 11))