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From: versto@cs.vu.nl (Verstoep C)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: #define DEBUG... (using printf for debugging)
Message-ID: <6482@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 8 May 90 11:47:49 GMT
References: <103kla@physc1.byu.edu>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Lines: 31


About one year ago a public domain package written by Fred Fish,
appropriately called DBUG, appeared on the net.
It's main feature is that it you can select, as a commandline option,
the debug statements you want. For example (just snapped from another window):

        DBUG_PRINT("cluster", ("re-evaluating parameter `%s'",
			       param->par_idp->id_text));
or
	DBUG_EXECUTE("objects", { PrintObject(obj); });

On the commandline you can then say (amake being the program I'm working on):

	amake -%d,cluster
or
	amake -%d,cluster,objects

which means that only the debug statements with the keywords mentioned will
be executed. As shown above, a debug statement can be a generic print statement
or an arbitrary piece of code by means of a DBUG_EXECUTE.
If the program is compiled with the -DDBUG_OFF flags, all debugging code
is automatically excluded, so you'll never have to remove a debug statement
for efficiency reasons.
Needless to say, this package is especially great for large programs under
development. Besides the features mentioned it also has a kind of profiler and
function tracer built-in, although I don't use those currently.

If you're interested in the package, you could try to get it from one of
the archives, or else contact me.

Kees Verstoep (versto@cs.vu.nl)