I need a function that can debug

Hi,

I am new to this message board and I am a newby and I know I will be needing some help. I need a function that can debug the program from within the code to let me know where the break or error happen. Is there something like that you can call on to be put in a program.

Thanks

It's called printf(). You shove them all over your program.

Code:

printf("The program made it to this point.");

Otherwise you can just use a debugger. You might have gotten it with your compiler.

Some useful defines for debugging are:

Code:

__LINE__  /* current line of the source file (<underscore><underscore>LINE<underscore><underscore>) */
__FILE__  /* current source file name */
__TIME__  /* the time this executable was compiled (string) */
__DATE__ /* the date it was compiled (string) */
__func__  /* (C99) name of the current function */

So you could have a debugging macro like this:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

#define debug_str(s) \
    printf(__FILE__ ":" __func__ "():%i: %s\n", __LINE__, s)

int main(void) {
    debug_str("Before printf()");
    printf("Hello, World!\n");
    debug_str("After printf()");

    return 0;
}

Output:

Code:

debug_str.c:main():7: Before printf()
Hello, World!
debug_str.c:main():9: After printf()

The best debugging tool, however, is a debugger. If you have Dev-C++ or GCC, then you can compile your program with -g and use GDB to debug it:

Code:

C>gcc -g -o hello.exe hello.c

C>gdb hello.exe
This is GDB version x.xx ....
(gdb) run
Hello, World!

The program exited normally.
(gdb) quit
C>

This site has a tutorial on using GDB.