While developing a new application for PHP 5, it was quite annoying that ctags couldn't parse the new function definitions (if you use for example public/private/protected). Therefore I took my rusty c-knowledge and patched the php parser within ctags and all runs well now. Here's the patch and I will soon submit it to the ctags people and hopefully it will get included in the next release. The patch is against ctags 5.5.4, but it should work with older releases as well.