TRACE(3)

✨ TRACE(3) ✨

the Allegro manual, but make it a group chat 💖

🎀 NAME 🎀

TRACE — bestie, it's the debugging helper macro that traces your messages. It lives in the Allegro game programming library. 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <allegro.h>

void TRACE(char *msg, ...);

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so listen. TRACE is a debugging helper macro. and the vibe is: normally it compiles away to nothing. like, it's not even there. ghosted. poof. 🫥

BUT — and this is the moment, this is the main character energy — if you defined the preprocessor symbol DEBUGMODE before including the Allegro headers, then it takes the message you gave it (in ASCII format, obvs 💁) and passes it straight to al_trace(). slay.

Example, because seeing it is believing:

#define DEBUGMODE
#include
...
void my_blitter(BITMAP *source, int flags)
{
   static int count_call = 0;
   TRACE("my_blitter() called %d times.\n", count_call++);
   ...
}

no cap, that count_call++ is out here keeping receipts on every single call. iconic. 👑

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

• al_trace(3)
• ASSERT(3)
• register_trace_handler(3)

k bye bestie, go trace something 💖 this was the Allegro manual, version 4.4.3 — she's 4.4.3 coded and she ate, fr fr. 🎀✨