Manual Pages  — curs_trace

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

SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION RETURN VALUE PORTABILITY SEE ALSO

#include <curses.h>

void _tracef(const char *format, ...);
void _tracedump(const char *label, WINDOW *win);
char *_traceattr(attr_t attr);
char *_traceattr2(int buffer, chtype ch);
char *_nc_tracebits(void);
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);
char *_tracemouse(const MEVENT *event);
void trace(const unsigned int param);

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 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.

The principal parts of this interface are the trace routine which selectively enables different tracing features, and the _tracef routine which writes formatted data to the trace file.

Calling trace with a nonzero parameter opens the file trace in the current directory for output. The parameter is formed by OR'ing values from the list of TRACE_xxx definitions in <curses.h>. These include:

TRACE_DISABLE
	turn off tracing.
TRACE_TIMES
	trace user and system times of updates.
TRACE_TPUTS
	trace tputs 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.

These functions check the NCURSES_TRACE environment variable, to set the tracing feature as if trace was called:

filter, initscr, new_prescr, newterm, nofilter, ripoffline, setupterm, slk_init, tgetent

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

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.