Mongo Shell - Console/Debug Log

Question

Probably a dumb question. Experimenting with Mongo shell.

I want to do something like:

matt@linuxvm:~/mongodb-linux-i686-1.2.3/bin$ ./mongo
MongoDB shell version: 1.2.3
url: test
connecting to: test
Thu Feb 25 20:57:47 connection accepted from 127.0.0.1:37987 #3
type "help" for help
> function test() { debug.log("hello") }
> test()
Thu Feb 25 20:58:06 JS Error: ReferenceError: debug is not defined (shell):0

In other words, how can I output to the console when evaluating JS functions from within Mongo shell. I intend some admin / populate script that I'd like to output some nicety info.

I've tried console.log, debug.log, log the obvious ones..

Answer 1

I've found the answer, it is simply print

print("sweetnesss");

Answer 2

I usually use scripts when interacting with the shell, so I wrote a basic Logging object that I "load(script)" into the shell, and then use the Logging object to call logging levels (debug,info,warn,error). The Logger object does use 'print' and 'printjson' at it's core. Also, it contains a basic sprintf, padding, record formatting, etc. If you are going to be doing any signifigant amount of script work with mongodb, I recommend this route. Debugging mongodb scripts feels like being back at intro to programming and debugging with print statements. Configurable logging makes this a little better, but I really miss being able to step through the code.