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2.5 Command line options for debugging

Finally, there are several options for aiding in debugging m4 scripts.

-d[FLAGS]
--debug[=FLAGS]
Set the debug-level according to the flags FLAGS. The debug-level controls the format and amount of information presented by the debugging functions. See Debug Levels, for more details on the format and meaning of FLAGS. If omitted, FLAGS defaults to `aeq'.
--debugfile=FILE
-o FILE
--error-output=FILE
Redirect dumpdef output, debug messages, and trace output to the named FILE. Warnings, error messages, and errprint output are still printed to standard error. If unspecified, debug output goes to standard error; if empty, debug output is discarded. See Debug Output, for more details. The spellings -o and --error-output are misleading and inconsistent with other GNU tools; for now they are silently accepted as synonyms of --debugfile, but in a future version of M4, using them will cause a warning to be issued.
-l NUM
--arglength=NUM
Restrict the size of the output generated by macro tracing to NUM characters per trace line. If unspecified or zero, output is unlimited. See Debug Levels, for more details.
-t NAME
--trace=NAME
This enables tracing for the macro NAME, at any point where it is defined. NAME need not be defined when this option is given. This option may be given more than once, and order is significant with respect to file names. See Trace, for more details.