- Calling <STRONG>trace</STRONG> with a nonzero parameter creates the file <STRONG>trace</STRONG> in the
- current directory for output. If the file already exists, no tracing
- is done.
+ The other functions either return a pointer to a string-area (allo-
+ cated by the corresponding function), or return no value (such as
+ <STRONG>_tracedump</STRONG>, which implements the screen dump for <STRONG>TRACE_UPDATE</STRONG>).
+ The caller should not free these strings, since the allocation is
+ reused on successive calls. To work around the problem of a single
+ string-area per function, some use a buffer-number parameter,
+ telling the library to allocate additional string-areas.
+
+ The <STRONG>curses_trace</STRONG> function is always available, whether or not the other
+ trace functions are available:
+
+ <STRONG>o</STRONG> If tracing is available, calling <STRONG>curses_trace</STRONG> with a nonzero param-
+ eter updates the trace mask, and returns the previous trace mask.