NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | PORTABILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

curs_trace(3X)                                                curs_trace(3X)

NAME         top

       trace, _tracef, _traceattr, _traceattr2, _tracecchar_t,
       _tracecchar_t2, _tracechar, _tracechtype, _tracechtype2,
       _nc_tracebits, _tracedump, _tracemouse - curses debugging routines

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <curses.h>
       void trace(const unsigned int param);
       void _tracef(const char *format, ...);
       char *_traceattr(attr_t attr);
       char *_traceattr2(int buffer, chtype ch);
       char *_tracecchar_t(const cchar_t *string);
       char *_tracecchar_t2(int buffer, const cchar_t *string);
       char *_tracechar(int ch);
       char *_tracechtype(chtype ch);
       char *_tracechtype2(int buffer, chtype ch);
       void _tracedump(const char *label, WINDOW *win);
       char *_nc_tracebits(void);
       char *_tracemouse(const MEVENT *event);

DESCRIPTION         top

       The trace routines are used for debugging the ncurses libraries, as
       well as applications which use the ncurses libraries.  These
       functions are normally available only with the debugging library
       e.g., libncurses_g.a, but may be compiled into any model (shared,
       static, profile) by defining the symbol TRACE.  Additionally, some
       functions are only available with the wide-character configuration of
       the libraries.
   Functions
       The principal parts of this interface are
       ·   trace, which selectively enables different tracing features, and
       ·   _tracef, which writes formatted data to the trace file.
       Calling trace with a nonzero parameter creates the file trace in the
       current directory for output.  If the file already exists, no tracing
       is done.
       The other functions either return a pointer to a string-area
       (allocated by the corresponding function), or return no value (such
       as _tracedump, which implements the screen dump for TRACE_UPDATE).
       The caller should not free these strings, since the allocation is
       reused on successive calls.  To work around the problem of a single
       string-area per function, some use a buffer-number parameter, telling
       the library to allocate additional string-areas.
   Trace Parameter
       The trace parameter is formed by OR'ing values from the list of
       TRACE_xxx definitions in <curses.h>.  These include:
       TRACE_DISABLE
            turn off tracing by passing a zero parameter.
            The library flushes the output file, but retains an open file-
            descriptor to the trace file so that it can resume tracing later
            if a nonzero parameter is passed to the trace function.
       TRACE_TIMES
            trace user and system times of updates.
       TRACE_TPUTS
            trace tputs(3X) calls.
       TRACE_UPDATE
            trace update actions, old & new screens.
       TRACE_MOVE
            trace cursor movement and scrolling.
       TRACE_CHARPUT
            trace all character outputs.
       TRACE_ORDINARY
            trace all update actions.  The old and new screen contents are
            written to the trace file for each refresh.
       TRACE_CALLS
            trace all curses calls.  The parameters for each call are
            traced, as well as return values.
       TRACE_VIRTPUT
            trace virtual character puts, i.e., calls to addch.
       TRACE_IEVENT
            trace low-level input processing, including timeouts.
       TRACE_BITS
            trace state of TTY control bits.
       TRACE_ICALLS
            trace internal/nested calls.
       TRACE_CCALLS
            trace per-character calls.
       TRACE_DATABASE
            trace read/write of terminfo/termcap data.
       TRACE_ATTRS
            trace changes to video attributes and colors.
       TRACE_MAXIMUM
            maximum trace level, enables all of the separate trace features.
       Some tracing features are enabled whenever the trace parameter is
       nonzero.  Some features overlap.  The specific names are used as a
       guideline.
   Initialization
       These functions check the NCURSES_TRACE environment variable, to set
       the tracing feature as if trace was called:
           filter, initscr, new_prescr, newterm, nofilter, restartterm,
           ripoffline, setupterm, slk_init, tgetent, use_env,
           use_extended_names, use_tioctl
   Command-line Utilities
       The  command-line  utilities  such as tic(1) provide a verbose option
       which extends the set of messages written using the  trace  function.
       Both  of  these  (-v  and trace) use the same variable (_nc_tracing),
       which determines the messages which are written.
       Because the command-line utilities may call initialization  functions
       such  as  setupterm, tgetent or use_extended_names, some of their de‐
       bugging output may be directed to the trace file if the NCURSES_TRACE
       environment variable is set:
       ·   messages  produced in the utility are written to the standard er‐
           ror.
       ·   messages produced by the underlying library are written to trace.
       If ncurses is built without tracing, none of the latter are produced,
       and fewer diagnostics are provided by the command-line utilities.

RETURN VALUE         top

       Routines which return a value are designed to be used as parameters
       to the _tracef routine.

PORTABILITY         top

       These functions are not part of the XSI interface.  Some other curses
       implementations are known to have similar, undocumented features, but
       they are not compatible with ncurses.
       A few functions are not provided when symbol versioning is used:
           _nc_tracebits, _tracedump, _tracemouse

SEE ALSO         top

       curses(3X).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the ncurses (new curses) project.  Information
       about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git mirror of the CVS repository 
       ⟨git://ncurses.scripts.mit.edu/ncurses.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or
       you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
                                                              curs_trace(3X)