GROFF_TRACE
Section: Environments, Tables, and Troff Macros (7)
Updated: 4 November 2014
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NAME
groff_trace - groff macro package trace.tmac
SYNOPSIS
[
options
Ellipsis]]
[
files
Ellipsis]]
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, 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.
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 control 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 command line option
-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.
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 terminal, the normal formatted output (standard output) is
redirected to the nirvana device
/dev/null.
The resulting diagnostic messages are displayed directly below the
corresponding example.
Command line option
Example:
-
sh# echo [aq].
> .de test_macro
> ..
> .test_macro
> .test_macro some dummy arguments
> [aq] | 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"
The entry and the exit of each macro call is displayed on the terminal
(standard output) [em] together with the arguments (if any).
Nested macro calls
Example:
-
sh# echo [aq].
> .de child
> ..
> .de parent
> .child
> ..
> .parent
> [aq] | groff -m trace > /dev/null
*** .de child
*** .de parent
*** 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
Example:
-
sh# echo [aq].
> .de before
> ..
> .mso trace.tmac
> .de after
> ..
> .before
> .after
> .before
> [aq] | 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.
PROBLEMS
Because
trace.tmac
wraps the
.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
-
.foo \\\\n[bar]
normally passes [oq]\\n[bar][cq] to macro [oq].foo[cq], but with
the redefined
.de
request it passes [oq]\n[bar][cq] instead.
The solution to this problem is to use groff[aq]s
\E
escape which is an escape character not interpreted in copy mode, for
example
-
.foo \En[bar]
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.
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
info(1)
file.
COPYING
Copyright [co] 2002-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of groff, the GNU roff type-setting system.
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.
AUTHORS
Written by
Bernd Warken
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- EXAMPLES
-
- Command line option
-
- Nested macro calls
-
- Activating with .mso
-
- PROBLEMS
-
- FILES
-
- ENVIRONMENT
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- COPYING
-
- AUTHORS
-
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