GROFF_TRACE(7) | Miscellaneous Information Manual | GROFF_TRACE(7) |
Elements in brackets denote optional arguments, and the ellipsis means that there can be any number of arguments of this kind.
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 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.
*** 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).
*** 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.
*** 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.
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
This document is part of groff, the GNU roff distribution. It was written by
A complete reference for all parts of the groff system is found in the groff info(1) file.
July 30, 2004 | Groff Version 1.19.2 |