What does -DDEBUG actually do?

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2 total messages Started by Dick Silbar Tue, 10 Nov 1992 18:49

#1479

Author: Dick Silbar
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 18:49

9 lines
1019 bytes

I suspect this is very naive, but I looked all through the on-line manuals and 
found no answer to the subject question.  The symbol table seems to be made
by the -g option to cc.  So what does -DDEBUG buy me?

One answer MIGHT be (I am guessing) the ability to denote some lines in my 
C code (with 'DEBUG'?), such as my favorite printf statements, so that they 
are compiled when -DDEBUG is declared, but not when it is not.

   Dick Silbar (NeXTMail:silbar@whistler.lanl.gov)

Re: What does -DDEBUG actually do?

#1540

Author: Bruce F. Webster
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 15:13

29 lines
1770 bytes

In article <10NOV199211495062@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov> silbar@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov  
(Dick Silbar) writes:
> I suspect this is very naive, but I looked all through the on-line manuals  
and 
> found no answer to the subject question.  The symbol table seems to be made
> by the -g option to cc.  So what does -DDEBUG buy me?
> 
> One answer MIGHT be (I am guessing) the ability to denote some lines in my 
> C code (with 'DEBUG'?), such as my favorite printf statements, so that they 
> are compiled when -DDEBUG is declared, but not when it is not.
> 

Exactly.  Among other things, this allows you to insert conditional code into  
your program, bracketed as follows:

#ifdef	DEBUG
<debugging code here>
#endif


..bruce..

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