EBNF (Extended Backus Normal Form) description of the format of the tags
file created by etags.c and interpreted by etags.el

Productions created from current behaviour to aid extensions
Francesco Potorti` <pot@gnu.org> 2002
================================================================

FF ::= #x0c				   /* tag section starter */

LF ::= #x0a				   /* line terminator */

DEL ::= #x7f				   /* pattern terminator */

SOH ::= #x01				   /* name terminator */

regchar ::= [^#x0a#x0c#x7f]		   /* regular character */

regstring ::= { regchar }		   /* regular string */

unsint ::= [0-9] { [0-9] }		   /* non-negative integer */



tagfile ::= { tagsection }		   /* a tags file */

tagsection ::= FF LF ( includesec | regularsec ) LF

includesec ::= filename ",include" [ LF fileprop ]

regularsec ::= filename "," [ unsint ] [ LF fileprop ] { LF tag }

filename ::= regchar regstring		   /* a file name */

fileprop ::= "(" regstring ")"		   /* an elisp alist */

tag ::= directtag | patterntag

directtag ::= DEL realposition		   /* no pattern */

patterntag ::= pattern DEL [ tagname SOH ] position

pattern ::= regstring			   /* a tag pattern */

tagname ::= regchar regstring		   /* a tag name */

position ::= realposition | "," 	   /* charpos,linepos */

realposition ::= "," unsint | unsint "," | unsint "," unsint