Msglogfunction

General-purpose message/logging function

Python

(wip)

def msg(m):
    msg = "[%s <scriptname>.py] %s" % (datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%y%m%d %H:%M.%S"), m)
    sys.stderr.write(msg+"\n")
    print msg

# TODO: write the other functions in the MEL code (or better, a factory function)

MEL

proc string ds() { return( string(`date -f "YYMMDD/hh:mm.ss"`) ); }

proc string ms( string $msg ) {
	return("["+ds()+" <scriptname>]: "+$msg);
}

proc  msg( string $msg ) { string $m=ms($msg); trace($m); if (!`about -b`) print("// "+$m+" //\n"); }
proc warn( string $msg ) { msg("WARNING: "+$msg); }
proc  err( string $msg ) { msg("ERROR: "+$msg); }
proc  dbg( string $msg ) { msg("(debug) "+$msg); }

A note about debug messages

I believe in adding lots of debug messages to my code (so it verbosely 'talks' about what it's doing). It always proves very useful in problem cases, but otherwise can be very annoying.

My solution was a log file viewer app which filters out lines with the (debug) string in them by default (with a switch in the UI to allow viewing the 'debug' version of the log).