| Abstract: | Debugging aids for high-level languages supporting structured data types should provide diagnostic information in a form terminologically as close as possible to that of the original source code. In addition, it is desirable that such software be portable. The package HEAPTRACE satisfies both the above criteria. It is a precompiler for Pascal programs which enables the user to trace the heap, selectively dumping dynamically-created records in a high-level format. It is portable as it is written entirely in Pascal; furthermore, since it is implemented as additions and modifications to a well-known compiler, its principles may easily be built into any Pascal compiler or diagnostics system. However, there is a small price to pay for achieving portability in that three possibly desirable features cannot be satisfactorily implemented in a machine-independent manner. |
