.ig
groff_trace.7

File position: <groff-source>/tmac/groff_trace.man

Last update: 05 Jan 2009

This file is part of groff, the GNU roff type-setting system.

Copyright (C) 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
  Free Software Foundation, Inc.

written by Bernd Warken <groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de>.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being this .ig-section and AUTHOR, with no
Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

A copy of the Free Documentation License is included as a file called
FDL in the main directory of the groff source package.
..
.ig
A copy of the GNU Free Documentation License is also available in this
Debian package as /usr/share/doc/groff/copyright.
..
.
.ds Ellipsis .\|.\|.\&\"
.
.TH GROFF_TRACE @MAN7EXT@ "@MDATE@" "Groff Version @VERSION@"
.
.SH NAME
groff_trace \- groff macro package trace.tmac
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH SYNOPSIS
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.SY "groff \-m trace"
.RI [ options
.IR \*[Ellipsis] ]
.RI [ files
.IR \*[Ellipsis] ]
.YS
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH DESCRIPTION
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
The
.I trace
macro package of
.BR groff (@MAN1EXT@)
can be a valuable tool for debugging documents written in the roff
formatting language.
.
A call stack trace is protocolled on standard error, this is, a
diagnostic message is emitted on entering and exiting of a macro call.
.
This greatly eases to track down an error in some macro.
.
.
.P
This tracing process is activated by specifying the groff or troff
command line option
.BR \-m\ trace .
This works also with the
.BR groffer (@MAN1EXT@)
viewer program.
.
A finer control can be obtained by including the macro file within the
document by the groff macro call
.BR .mso\ trace.tmac .
Only macros that are defined after this line are traced.
.
.
.P
If command line option
.B \-r\ trace-full=1
is given (or if this register is set in the document), number and string
register assignments together with some other requests are traced also.
.
.
.P
If some other macro package should be traced as well it must be specified
after
.B \-m\ trace
on the command line.
.
.
.P
The macro file
.B trace.tmac
is unusual because it does not contain any macros to be called by a
user.
.
Instead, the existing macro definition and appending facilities are
modified such that they display diagnostic messages.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH EXAMPLES
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
In the following examples, a roff fragment is fed into groff via
standard input.
.
As we are only interested in the diagnostic messages (standard error)
on the terminal, the normal formatted output (standard output) is
redirected to the nirvana device
.IR /dev/null .
The resulting diagnostic messages are displayed directly below the
corresponding example.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SS "Command line option"
Example:
.
.RS
.P
.EX
\fIsh#\fP echo '.
> .de test_macro
> ..
> .test_macro
> .test_macro some dummy arguments
> ' | groff -m trace >/dev/null

*** .de test_macro
*** de trace enter: .test_macro
*** trace exit: .test_macro
*** de trace enter: .test_macro "some" "dummy" "arguments"
*** trace exit: .test_macro "some" "dummy" "arguments"
.EE
.RE
.
.P
The entry and the exit of each macro call is displayed on the terminal
(standard output) \[em] together with the arguments (if any).
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SS "Nested macro calls"
Example:
.
.RS
.P
.EX
\fIsh#\fP echo '.
> .de child
> ..
> .de parent
> .child
> ..
> .parent
> ' | groff -m trace >/dev/null

*** .de child
*** .de parent
*** de trace enter: .parent
 *** de trace enter: .child
 *** trace exit: .child
*** trace exit: .parent
.EE
.RE
.
.P
This shows that macro calls can be nested.
.
This powerful feature can help to tack down quite complex call stacks.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SS "Activating with .mso"
Example:
.
.RS
.P
.EX
\fIsh#\fP echo '.
> .de before
> ..
> .mso trace.tmac
> .de after
> ..
> .before
> .after
> .before
>  ' | groff >/dev/null

*** de trace enter: .after
*** trace exit: .after
.EE
.RE
.
.P
Here, the tracing is activated within the document, not by a command
line option.
.
As tracing was not active when macro
.I before
was defined, no call of this macro is protocolled; on the other hand,
the macro
.I after
is fully protocolled.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH PROBLEMS
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
Because
.B trace.tmac
wraps the
.B .de
request (and its cousins), macro arguments are expanded one level more.
.
This causes problems if an argument contains four backslashes or more
to prevent too early expansion of the backslash.  For example, this
macro call
.
.IP
.EX
\&.foo \e\e\e\en[bar]
.EE
.
.P
normally passes `\e\en[bar]' to macro `.foo', but with the redefined
.B .de
request it passes `\en[bar]' instead.
.
.P
The solution to this problem is to use groff's
.B \eE
escape which is an escape character not interpreted in copy mode, for
example
.
.IP
.EX
\&.foo \eEn[bar]
.EE
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH FILES
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
The
.I trace
macros are kept in the file
.B trace.tmac
located in the
.IR "tmac directory" ;
see
.BR groff_tmac (@MAN5EXT@)
for details.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.TP
.B $GROFF_TMAC_PATH
A colon-separated list of additional tmac directories in which to
search for macro files; see
.BR groff_tmac (@MAN5EXT@)
for details.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH AUTHOR
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
Copyright (C) 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
.
.P
This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free
Documentation License) version 1.1 or later.
.
You should have received a copy of the FDL on your system, it is also
available on-line at the
.UR http://\:www.gnu.org/\:copyleft/\:fdl.html
GNU copyleft site
.UE .
.
.P
This document is part of
.IR groff ,
the GNU roff distribution.
.
It was written by Bernd Warken <groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de>.
.
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.TP
.BR groff (@MAN1EXT@)
An overview of the groff system.
.
.TP
.BR troff (@MAN1EXT@)
For details on option
.BR \-m .
.
.TP
.BR groffer (@MAN1EXT@)
A viewer program for all kinds of roff documents.
.
.TP
.BR groff_tmac (@MAN5EXT@)
A general description of groff macro packages.
.
.TP
.BR groff (@MAN7EXT@)
A short reference for the groff formatting language.
.
.P
A complete reference for all parts of the groff system is found in the
groff
.BR info (1)
file.
.
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