call command

Synopsis

/call

Description

call displays a debugger-like stack trace of the script scopes currently executing. Use it inside an alias or callback to see the chain of active calls that led there.

The output begins with Call stack, lists frames from the current frame back toward frame 0, and ends with End of call stack. Each entry contains its stack index and the statement currently recorded for that frame. The current call statement appears first, at the highest active index; the indexes decrease toward the oldest frame. A frame without a recorded statement appears as <async>.

Statements are recorded before command-name normalization and $ expansion. Their original spelling, arguments, and any leading command slash can therefore appear in the listing. This is a script-scope trace, not a native C backtrace, and it does not list local variable values or create a file.

There are no options or required arguments. Supplied arguments are ignored. The command is available in every build, is strictly local, and requires no IRC connection. It displays text rather than returning a list as a function result. Output uses EPIC's diagnostic yell mechanism, so a yell hook can handle or suppress it.

Some internal panic and trapped-error paths print a similar trace directly to standard error. They use panic_dump_call_stack() rather than executing the call command; a trace is not guaranteed for every kind of crash.

Example

Define two aliases in a script:

alias outer {
    inner
}
alias inner {
    call
}

When you run /outer, the trace starts with the call statement in inner, followed by the inner invocation in outer, then the older calling context. Exact indexes and additional frames depend on that context.

History

The call command first appeared in EPIC3.001.

Source

See source/commands.c for the registration, e_call(), and statement recording in parse_statement(). source/alias.c implements scope management, dump_call_stack(), and panic_dump_call_stack(). source/output.c implements yell(); source/ircaux.c and source/irc.c contain internal error paths that print panic traces.