The Rust dbg! macro
The dbg! macro is a useful macro to debug, and I think a not well known one, not to be confused with debug logs using format strings, this macro is useful when you are about to put println calls everywhere in your code to know if it reached a path, what value a variable has, etc.
It uses the Debug trait implementation of the type of the given expression.
Since Rust is an expression oriented language, you can use this macro nearly everywhere:
fn factorial(n: u32) -> u32 {
if dbg!(n <= 1) {
dbg!(1)
} else {
dbg!(n * factorial(n - 1))
}
}
fn main() {
dbg!(factorial(4));
}
This outputs the following:
[src/main.rs:2] n <= 1 = false
[src/main.rs:2] n <= 1 = false
[src/main.rs:2] n <= 1 = false
[src/main.rs:2] n <= 1 = true
[src/main.rs:3] 1 = 1
[src/main.rs:5] n * factorial(n - 1) = 2
[src/main.rs:5] n * factorial(n - 1) = 6
[src/main.rs:5] n * factorial(n - 1) = 24
[src/main.rs:10] factorial(4) = 24
Using this macro without any argument will print the current file and line number.
One thing to be aware is that this macro moves the input, in cases where this is a problem it's useful to borrow.
Sources:
