Logging

[jsgroby]

Anyone have any recommendations on a low overhead way to log all of the output of an engine to a file each time you run the engine? My engine is in ANSI C, so would be interested in source code or suggestions related to that language.

Is there a engine anyone knows of written in C that logs to a file? I will be glad to take a look at the source and figure it out.

Thanks for any information.

Jeff

[ZirconiumX]

Anyone have any recommendations on a low overhead way to log all of the output of an engine to a file each time you run the engine? My engine is in ANSI C, so would be interested in source code or suggestions related to that language.

Is there a engine anyone knows of written in C that logs to a file? I will be glad to take a look at the source and figure it out.

Thanks for any information.

Jeff

You could use xboard -debug if your engine is xboard protocol, and I believe polyglot has a logging function, too.

Matthew:out

[hgm]

Usually one lets the GUI take care of this.

[Henk]

Usually one lets the GUI take care of this.

By the way do you know how to play ultra short games using winboard. Then I don't need to see the GUI but only the result of the match.

[hgm]

The easiest way to not see the GUI is to minimize the window.

There is a command-line option -noGUI, which suppresses the board and icon update during the game. When you use that the round-trip delay for engine-GUI traffic should reduce to around 1 msec, which should be low enough to play very fast games. (Keep in mind that when you use standard functions to let the engine read the time, the accuracty is only 16 msec.) If you don't need extremely fast play (i.e. down to 10 sec/game), allowing the GUI update is usually not a problem, however, as long as you don't forget to switch move animation off.

[jsgroby]

Usually one lets the GUI take care of this.

Thanks. I had not really thought out what I was wanting before I posted. With the GUIs (engine is both uci and xboard compatible) I was getting the logs, but I was more concerned about running debug tests and perft and getting that output. Turns out that I can just redirect the output to a file since I am on unix. That way I don't have to put any additional code in that might have an effect on performance.

Thanks for the answers everyone.

Jeff

[bob]

Anyone have any recommendations on a low overhead way to log all of the output of an engine to a file each time you run the engine? My engine is in ANSI C, so would be interested in source code or suggestions related to that language.

Is there a engine anyone knows of written in C that logs to a file? I will be glad to take a look at the source and figure it out.

Thanks for any information.

Jeff

Crafty has done this forever. For things I want logged, I use a "Print()" procedure that is in Crafty utility.c. It displays output to the display exactly like printf (it uses printf internally) but also directs a copy to a file.. I don't notice enough overhead to even measure, but I have the ability to turn it off should I ever have to write to a device slow enough to cause problems...

[bob]

Usually one lets the GUI take care of this.

I think he is wanting to log more than what he sends to xboard. For example all my end of search statistics, time used, sometimes debugging output on how many reductions were done by ply and such, etc.

[bob]

Usually one lets the GUI take care of this.

Thanks. I had not really thought out what I was wanting before I posted. With the GUIs (engine is both uci and xboard compatible) I was getting the logs, but I was more concerned about running debug tests and perft and getting that output. Turns out that I can just redirect the output to a file since I am on unix. That way I don't have to put any additional code in that might have an effect on performance.

Thanks for the answers everyone.

Jeff

If that is all you want, try this:


program | tee filename

now output goes to filename AND the display although it can get sort of "chunky" in the way it gets displayed in chunks rather than always being real smooth.

[jsgroby]

Usually one lets the GUI take care of this.

Thanks. I had not really thought out what I was wanting before I posted. With the GUIs (engine is both uci and xboard compatible) I was getting the logs, but I was more concerned about running debug tests and perft and getting that output. Turns out that I can just redirect the output to a file since I am on unix. That way I don't have to put any additional code in that might have an effect on performance.

Thanks for the answers everyone.

Jeff

If that is all you want, try this:


program | tee filename

now output goes to filename AND the display although it can get sort of "chunky" in the way it gets displayed in chunks rather than always being real smooth.

Perfect. Exactly what I needed. Thank you sir.

Jeff