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GROFF_TRACE(7) GROFF_TRACE(7)
NAME
groff_trace - groff macro package trace.tmac
SYNOPSIS
groff -m trace [options...] [files...]
Elements in brackets denote optional arguments, and the ellipsis means that there
can be any number of arguments of this kind.
DESCRIPTION
The trace macro package of groff(1) can be a valuable tool for debugging documents
written in the roff formatting language. A call stack trace is protocolled on
standard error, that means, a diagnostic message is emitted on entering and exiting
of a macro call. This greatly eases to track down an error in some macro.
This tracing process is activated by specifying the groff or troff command line
option -m trace. This works also with the groffer(1) viewer program. A finer con-
trol can be obtained by including the macro file within the document by the groff
macro call .mso trace.tmac. Only macros that are defined after this line are
traced.
If some other macro package should be traced as well it must be specified after
-m trace on the command line.
The macro file 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.
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 termi-
nal, the normal formatted output (standard output) is redirected into the nirvana
device /dev/null. The resulting diagnostic messages are displayed directly below
the corresponding example.
Command line option
sh# echo ’.
> .de test_macro
> ..
> .test_macro
> .test_macro some dummy arguments
> ’ | groff -m trace >/dev/null
*** de trace enter: test_macro
*** trace exit: test_macro
*** de trace enter: test_macro "some" "dummy" "arguments"
*** trace exit: test_macro "some" "dummy" "arguments"
The entry and the exit of each macro call is displayed on the terminal (standard
output) — together with the arguments (if any).
Nested macro calls
sh# echo ’.
> .de child
> ..
> .de parent
> .child
> ..
> .parent
> ’ | groff -m trace >/dev/null
*** de trace enter: parent
*** de trace enter: child
*** trace exit: child
*** trace exit: parent
This shows that macro calls can be nested. This powerful feature can help to tack
down quite complex call stacks.
Activating with .mso
sh# echo ’.
> .de before
> ..
> .mso trace.tmac
> .de after
> ..
> .before
> .after
> .before
> ’ | groff >/dev/null
*** de trace enter: after
*** trace exit: after
Here, the tracing is activated within the document, not by a command line option.
As tracing was not active when macro before was defined, no call of this macro is
protocolled; on the other hand, the macro after is fully protocolled.
FILES
The trace macros are kept in the file trace.tmac located in the tmac directory; see
groff_tmac(5) for details.
ENVIRONMENT
$GROFF_TMAC_PATH
A colon-separated list of additional tmac directories in which to search for
macro files; see groff_tmac(5) for details.
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This document is distributed under the terms of the FDL (GNU Free Documentation Li-
cense) 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 GNU copyleft site 〈http://www.gnu.org/
copyleft/fdl.html〉.
This document is part of groff, the GNU roff distribution. It was written by Bernd
Warken 〈bwarken AT mayn.de〉.
SEE ALSO
groff(1)
An overview of the groff system.
troff(1)
For details on option -m.
groffer(1)
A viewer program for all kinds of roff documents.
groff_tmac(5)
A general description of groff macro packages.
groff(7)
A short reference for the groff formatting language.
A complete reference for all parts of the groff system is found in the groff in-
fo(1) file.
Groff Version 1.18.1.1 13 July 2002 GROFF_TRACE(7)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
On Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) PHP/5.2.5 mod_perl/1.30 mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a
Under GNU General Public License
2008-08-30 04:40 @38.103.63.61 CrawledBy CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)