CODEWITHSUNDEEP
clinuxdebuggingcalltrace
river
river

Reputation: 734

How can I trace all local function calls and exits, and record it to a file to review

I want to trace a C program under Linux, and record all function calls and returns in a format of tree. For example, the source code:

void a ()
{
    printf("a\n");
}
void b ()
{
    printf("b\n");
}

void c ()
{
    a();
    b();
}

int main()
{
    a();
    b();
    c();
}

And I want a output like the following:

call main
    call a
    exit a
    call b
    exit b
    call c
        call a
        exit a
        call b
        exit b
    exit c
exit main

It is a idealistic output. I just want to get all the process of local function calls and returns, so the similar output is also welcome.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1345

Answers (3)

djiang
djiang

Reputation: 48

Use cflow would be a good choice as well. The information of cflow could be found in gnu website, https://www.gnu.org/software/cflow/

Below is an example of cflow,

$ cflow foo.c cl.12.*.c
main() <int main (void) at foo.c:18>:
    foo_trivial_questions() <void foo_trivial_questions (void) at foo.c:13>:
        foo_cl_12_test() <void foo_cl_12_test (void) at cl.12.IntegertoRoman.c:32>:
            foo() <void foo (int n) at cl.12.IntegertoRoman.c:24>:
                intToRoman() <char *intToRoman (int num) at cl.12.IntegertoRoman.c:3>:
                    malloc()
                    strcat()
                printf()
                free()

Upvotes: 0

river
river

Reputation: 734

gcc -finstrument-functions does my job

Upvotes: 2

n0p
n0p

Reputation: 3496

To produce such an output by modifying code, try something like this (not optimized but does the job):

size_t indent;

#define ENTER_FUNC(function_name)                     \
    indent++;                                         \
    for(size_t i=0; i<indent; i++) printf("\t");      \
    printf("Call %s\n", function_name);

#define EXIT_FUNC(function_name)                     \
    for(size_t i=0; i<indent; i++) printf("\t");     \
    printf("Exit %s\n", function_name);              \
    indent--;

Call ENTER_FUNC at the beginning of each function to trace and EXIT_FUNC prior to any return. You can also enrich the macro to write in a log file.

Otherwise there are some profiling tools like gprof for example

Upvotes: 0

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