Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!cadre!pitt!cisunx!ejkst
From: ejkst@cisunx.UUCP (Eric J. Kennedy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: printf()
Message-ID: <7364@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 88 23:55:44 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 33


I was trying to debug a small program last night, using the world's most
popular debugger:

#ifdef DEBUG
printf("At such-N-such a location\n");
#endif

I was trying to track down a bug that was causing an immediate 'task
held' requester.  The problem appeared to be comming at the very
beginning of the program, so I inserted a printf("Beginning\n"); as the
first line of the program, after the declarations.  I still got a 'task
held' requester _before_ anything printed out.  Well, I figured out that
the bug was in a fscanf(file,"%d",n), (forgot the &n) on about the
fourth line of the program.
 
Now, my question is, why the heck didn't my message print out if it was
before the actual bug?  Is this a side effect of multitasking?  Is it
because my program and the console device are two different tasks, and
my program was crashing before the console device got around to
displaying the message?  If so, how can I get around it?  I sure don't
want to 
 
printf("...");
getchar(...);     /* stop program, wait for console to catch up */

or something silly like that.  

Thanks,

-- 
------------
Eric Kennedy
ejkst@cisunx.UUCP