Shortest way to pass text into an activity

My current WIP requires a stupid amount of debug text for me to make sure everything is working correctly. I would, however, also like to turn OFF the debug text from time to time.

I know a couple ways to handle this:

  1. check my global Boolean variable “debug state” every time I want to spit out another debug message
  2. set a global text variable “debug text” every time I want to spit out another message, then call an activity that will message debug text iff “debug state” is true

So if worst comes to worst, I have options. But enclosing every debugging message in an “if” statement is three lines of code, and setting a global text variable is two, and I’d ideally like to drop it to one to make my code more readable.

I know I can do something like this with an activity:

carry out the analysing activity with the pitchblende; 

Is there a way to have an activity take a text input, like this?

carry out the debug messaging activity with "This is some debug text";

What about a to-phrase?

[code]To debug (message - indexed text):
if debug state is true:
say message.

Every turn:
debug “Turn: [turn count]”.[/code]

I use compiler definitions for this sort of thing. They have the advantage of disappearing from the game entirely when you’re not using them, because the code between #ifdef’s is not compiled into the file if the option is undefined. I usually use three-liners so that every trace of the debug code is evaporated from the compiled game, but you could use Juhana’s method too–it trades a function call and the creation of a text or indexed text that otherwise wouldn’t be required for ease of use and cleanliness of code:

[code]Use custom debugging translates as (- Constant CUSTOM_DEBUG; -)

[Use custom debugging.]

To #if utilizing custom debugging:
(- #ifdef CUSTOM_DEBUG; -)

To #endif:
(- #endif; -)

To debug (T - an indexed text):
#if utilizing custom debugging;
say T;
#endif.

Every turn:
debug “Turn: [turn count]”.[/code]

Ah-ha! That’s exactly what I needed. Thank you so much!