A common task when navigating code bases is trying to figure out where certain methods are defined, and looking for occurrences of a certain method.

Vim has a built-in feature that allows you to navigate to the definition of a variable in the same file. With the cursor over a word, press gd to go to the declaration of the variable. For instance, open animal_farm.py and position your cursor at the beginning of make_animal on line 26. Press gd, and your cursor will jump to line 13, where the function is defined:

gd will look for a local variable declaration first. There's also gD, which will look for a global declaration (starting at the beginning of at the file instead of the beginning of the current scope).

This feature is not syntax aware, as out-of-the-box Vim does not know how your code is structured semantically. However, Vim supports tags—a file of semantically meaningful words and constructs across your files. For example, in Python, likely candidates for tags are classes, functions, and methods.