Symbol

Definition

A Symbol is the semantic unit extracted from source code. It is the base of the whole system: GhostMap first builds the project's symbol map and then layers Ghost metadata on top.

Supported symbol types

GhostMap recognizes Class, Function, Method, Interface, Struct, and Enum.

Internally they group into two categories:

• 'function': includes Function, Method, and Constructor.
• 'class': includes Class, Interface, Struct, and Enum.

How they are extracted

GhostMap tries, in this order:

1. LSP (vscode.executeDocumentSymbolProvider): if the language has an active language server, it is the preferred source.
2. Tree-sitter: per-language WASM grammars.
3. Regex fallback: per-language patterns when no LSP or Tree-sitter grammar is available (or when parsing fails).
4. PHP/Blade: has its own dedicated regex parser.

Supported languages

JavaScript, TypeScript, TSX, Python, PHP, Java, C#, Go, Rust, C, C++, Ruby, Dart, Elixir, Groovy, Julia, Objective-C, Scala, Solidity.

Example

// file: auth.service.ts
export class AuthService {
  login() { /* ... */ }
  logout() { /* ... */ }
}

Result (simplified):

AuthService   (class)
├── login     (function)
└── logout    (function)

This tree exists without any @ghost annotation. It is the pure symbol map. Ghost metadata attaches on top of it (see Ghost Metadata).

Next step

Continue with Ghost Metadata to see how information attaches to these symbols.