How to print out the method name and line number a

Question

I'm doing a presentation on debugging in Xcode and would like to get more information on using NSLog efficiently.

In particular, I have two questions:

• is there a way to easily NSLog the current method's name / line number?
• is there a way to "disable" all NSLogs easily before compiling for release code?

Answer 1

To complement the answers above, it can be quite useful to use a replacement for NSLog in certain situations, especially when debugging. For example, getting rid of all the date and process name/id information on each line can make output more readable and faster to boot.

The following link provides quite a bit of useful ammo for making simple logging much nicer.

http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/wiki/a-different-nslog

Answer 2

It is simple,for Example

-(void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication *)application {

    NSLog(@"%s", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__);

}

Output: -[AppDelegate applicationWillEnterForeground:]

Answer 3

There are a new trick that no answer give. You can use printf instead NSLog. This will give you a clean log:

With NSLog you get things like this:

2011-11-03 13:43:55.632 myApp[3739:207] Hello Word

But with printf you get only:

Hello World

Use this code

#ifdef DEBUG
    #define NSLog(FORMAT, ...) fprintf(stderr,"%s\n", [[NSString stringWithFormat:FORMAT, ##__VA_ARGS__] UTF8String]);
#else
    #define NSLog(...) {}              
#endif

Answer 4

building on top of above answers, here is what I plagiarized and came up with. Also added memory logging.

#import <mach/mach.h>

#ifdef DEBUG
#   define DebugLog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s(%d) " fmt), __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__);
#else
#   define DebugLog(...)
#endif


#define AlwaysLog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s(%d) " fmt), __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__);


#ifdef DEBUG
#   define AlertLog(fmt, ...)  { \
    UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] \
            initWithTitle : [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%s(Line: %d) ", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__]\
                  message : [NSString stringWithFormat : fmt, ##__VA_ARGS__]\
                 delegate : nil\
        cancelButtonTitle : @"Ok"\
        otherButtonTitles : nil];\
    [alert show];\
}
#else
#   define AlertLog(...)
#endif



#ifdef DEBUG
#   define DPFLog NSLog(@"%s(%d)", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__);//Debug Pretty Function Log
#else
#   define DPFLog
#endif


#ifdef DEBUG
#   define MemoryLog {\
    struct task_basic_info info;\
    mach_msg_type_number_t size = sizeof(info);\
    kern_return_t e = task_info(mach_task_self(),\
                                   TASK_BASIC_INFO,\
                                   (task_info_t)&info,\
                                   &size);\
    if(KERN_SUCCESS == e) {\
        NSNumberFormatter *formatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init]; \
        [formatter setNumberStyle:NSNumberFormatterDecimalStyle]; \
        DebugLog(@"%@ bytes", [formatter stringFromNumber:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:info.resident_size]]);\
    } else {\
        DebugLog(@"Error with task_info(): %s", mach_error_string(e));\
    }\
}
#else
#   define MemoryLog
#endif

Answer 5

NSLog(@"%s %d %s %s", __FILE__, __LINE__, __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __FUNCTION__);

Outputs file name, line number, and function name:

/proj/cocoa/cdcli/cdcli.m 121 managedObjectContext managedObjectContext

__FUNCTION__ in C++ shows mangled name __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ shows nice function name, in cocoa they look the same.

I'm not sure what is the proper way of disabling NSLog, I did:

#define NSLog

And no logging output showed up, however I don't know if this has any side effects.

Answer 6

Here are some useful macros around NSLog I use a lot:

#ifdef DEBUG
#   define DLog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s [Line %d] " fmt), __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__)
#else
#   define DLog(...)
#endif

// ALog always displays output regardless of the DEBUG setting
#define ALog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s [Line %d] " fmt), __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__)

The DLog macro is used to only output when the DEBUG variable is set (-DDEBUG in the projects's C flags for the debug confirguration).

ALog will always output text (like the regular NSLog).

The output (e.g. ALog(@"Hello world") ) will look like this:

-[LibraryController awakeFromNib] [Line 364] Hello world