GROFF_TRACE(7)						 Miscellaneous Information Manual					    GROFF_TRACE(7)

NAME

       groff_trace - groff macro package trace.tmac

SYNOPSIS

       groff -m trace [options ...] [files ...]

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 result-
       ing diagnostic messages are displayed directly below the corresponding example.

   Command line option
       Example:

	      sh# 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"

       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
       Example:

	      sh# 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

       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 '.
	      > .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.

PROBLEMS

       Because trace.tmac wraps the .de request (and its cousins), macro arguments are expanded one level more.  This causes problems if an  argu-
       ment contains four backslashes or more to prevent too early expansion of the backslash.	For example, this macro call

	      .foo \\n[bar]

       normally passes `\n[bar]' to macro `.foo', but with the redefined .de request it passes `
[bar]' instead.

       The solution to this problem is to use groff'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.

AUTHOR

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

       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 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.

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.

Groff Version 1.21						   25 June 2012 						    GROFF_TRACE(7)