These tips maybe useful for you when you need to debug your code without a real debugger. Typically, you will push variables's value to some displays such as the console on Windows/ Linux or the "Serial monitor" on Arduino. And when you don't want to see those outputs anymore, you delete those "cout"/ "print" lines, or better to comment them out.
You can save yourself from manually comment/ uncomment those lines (maybe scattered all over the place) repeatedly. Simple put this at the start of your source file:
1 | #define DEBUG
|
And wrap your debugging lines with this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | #ifdef DEBUG ... Serial.print(x); or ... cout << x << endl; ... #endif |
From now on, you can quickly toggle debugging output by comment/ uncomment the #define line.
There's also the inverted version. For example, only output PWM to motors when not debugging:
1 2 3 | #ifndef DEBUG motor_set(pwm) #endif |
You can have as many flags as you want. 1 flag for each module, 1 flag to toggle timing function execution...
1 2 3 | #define DEBUG_SPEED #define DEBUG_POSITION #define TIME |
You can also execute "or" operation. For example, on Arduino, we need to enable Serial to push out debugging values:
1 2 3 | #if defined(DEBUG) || defined(TIME) Serial.begin(115200); #endif |
Hope these tips can help you.
