Display / System.out.println flow of programs?

[bob connolly]

Hello,

Everytime i need to debug a problem i usually put a 'System.out.println(...)' statement at the beginning of each function!

Is there a switch or flag that can be turned on that will print out the function entered as the system flows thru the various programs?

Thanks very much!

[Steve Morrow]

You can use a constant boolean value and some idiom like:

if (DEBUG) {
   // whatever...
}

A more robust and extensible solution is to use a logging framework, such as what is available in 1.4 SDK, log4j, etc.

Hope this helps...

[bob connolly]

Thanks Steve, will be looking into that, always wondered what that log4j was all about!

Have a good one!

[Julien Grenier]

If using log4j is too complicated
the cheapest way to do it is to wrap the System.out.println(x) in a static method
like that

public class MySysOut{

public static void print(Object o){
System.out.println(o.toString()); //Comment to line to remove the flow of system.out!
}
}

then instead of calling System.out.println() in your project you just need to call MySysOut.print() , and you can even change the system.out.println call to some writing into a file.

[Stan James]

We use a vendor framework with an internal standard of writing methodEntry and methodExit log messages in every method. They took "every" a little to literally so that some recursive or commonly used methods show up thousands of times in the log, but otherwise it can be useful to turn them on now & then.