Debugging

rustc provides a number of tools to debug macros. One of the most useful is trace_macros!, which is a directive to the compiler instructing it to dump every macro invocation prior to expansion. For example, given the following:

// Note: make sure to use a nightly channel compiler.
#![feature(trace_macros)]

macro_rules! each_tt {
    () => {};
    ($_tt:tt $($rest:tt)*) => {each_tt!($($rest)*);};
}

each_tt!(foo bar baz quux);
trace_macros!(true);
each_tt!(spim wak plee whum);
trace_macros!(false);
each_tt!(trom qlip winp xod);

fn main() {}

The output is:

each_tt! { spim wak plee whum }
each_tt! { wak plee whum }
each_tt! { plee whum }
each_tt! { whum }
each_tt! {  }

This is particularly invaluable when debugging deeply recursive macros. You can also enable this from the command-line by adding -Z trace-macros to the compiler command line.

Secondly, there is log_syntax! which causes the compiler to output all tokens passed to it. For example, this makes the compiler sing a song:

// Note: make sure to use a nightly channel compiler.
#![feature(log_syntax)]

macro_rules! sing {
    () => {};
    ($tt:tt $($rest:tt)*) => {log_syntax!($tt); sing!($($rest)*);};
}

sing! {
    ^ < @ < . @ *
    '\x08' '{' '"' _ # ' '
    - @ '$' && / _ %
    ! ( '\t' @ | = >
    ; '\x08' '\'' + '$' ? '\x7f'
    , # '"' ~ | ) '\x07'
}

fn main() {}

This can be used to do slightly more targeted debugging than trace_macros!.

Sometimes, it is what the macro expands to that proves problematic. For this, the --pretty argument to the compiler can be used. Given the following code:

// Shorthand for initialising a `String`.
macro_rules! S {
    ($e:expr) => {String::from($e)};
}

fn main() {
    let world = S!("World");
    println!("Hello, {}!", world);
}

compiled with the following command:

rustc -Z unstable-options --pretty expanded hello.rs

produces the following output (modified for formatting):

#![feature(no_std, prelude_import)]
#![no_std]
#[prelude_import]
use std::prelude::v1::*;
#[macro_use]
extern crate std as std;
// Shorthand for initialising a `String`.
fn main() {
    let world = String::from("World");
    ::std::io::_print(::std::fmt::Arguments::new_v1(
        {
            static __STATIC_FMTSTR: &'static [&'static str]
                = &["Hello, ", "!\n"];
            __STATIC_FMTSTR
        },
        &match (&world,) {
             (__arg0,) => [
                ::std::fmt::ArgumentV1::new(__arg0, ::std::fmt::Display::fmt)
            ],
        }
    ));
}

Other options to --pretty can be listed using rustc -Z unstable-options --help -v; a full list is not provided since, as implied by the name, any such list would be subject to change at any time.