In particular, I'm editing files in Verilog and would like to see other instances of a word under the cursor in other files. Ideally, it'd bring up a list like the auto-complete list. I can then select the line entry and vim would open the file (either in the same window or a new tab).
I've seen this feature in Emacs. I have to think it exists in Vim somewhere.
This would be really fun to write in vimscript, but I don't exactly have time at the moment. Hopefully this will get you going in the right direction:
There is a vim plugin called Fugitive
It allows you to do things like git grep, or git blame right from you vim console. https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive
Their git grep command, Ggrep, should get you a list of local files with whatever word you want to grep for. Possibly check out this Q/A for getting it to work nicely: Getting 'git grep' to work effectively in vim
Last thing I would do is write a little vimscript function and a keystroke alias that would call Ggrep with the word under the cursor.
(hopefully I'll have time to write a better answer later)
If you have a tags file available, you might be able to use :tselect identifier for that purpose.
Vimgrep is your friend.
:vimgrep /pattern/ <path>/**
This will add lines to the quickfix window. Each line is the text from the line in a file that matches the pattern. The ** is shorthand for recurse into subdirectories.
