Igor’s Tip of the Week #163: Names list – Hex Rays

Written by Igor Skochinsky | Nov 2, 2023

The Functions list is probably the most known and used part of IDA’s default desktop layout. It includes all detected functions in the current database and offers a quick way to find and navigate to any of them. However, the database consists not only of functions but also data items or instructions which are not included into any function. For example, there may be a name provided by the debug info but IDA can fail to create a function for some reason. In that case you can have a name but no function. You can force create a function, but how to even discover such situation? If you know the name beforehand, you can use the “Jump to address” (G) action to jump to it, but it can get complicated if the name is long or has uncommon characters. How to discover such names without scrolling through the whole listing?

Names window

A separate view with the list of names can be opened using View > Open subviews > Names (Shift–F4).

Many entries will be the same as in the Functions list:

But there are also differences:

the Functions list includes all functions, including unnamed ones (they get a dummy name beginning with sub_)
the Names list includes not only function names (marked with 𝑓) but also other names, for example global labels (i) or data items (D).

Jump by name

Instead of permanent Names window, you can also use Jump > Jump by name… (Ctrl–L). This shows the same list as a modal chooser, meaning you can use filtering or incremental search to find the name you need and jump to it with Enter or double-click.