`debug` exposes a function; simply pass this function the name of your module, and it will return a decorated version of `console.error` for you to pass debug statements to. This will allow you to toggle the debug output for different parts of your module as well as the module as a whole.
When actively developing an application it can be useful to see when the time spent between one `debug()` call and the next. Suppose for example you invoke `debug()` before requesting a resource, and after as well, the "+NNNms" will show you how much time was spent between calls.
If you're using this in one or more of your libraries, you _should_ use the name of your library so that developers may toggle debugging as desired without guessing names. If you have more than one debuggers you _should_ prefix them with your library name and use ":" to separate features. For example "bodyParser" from Connect would then be "connect:bodyParser".
The `*` character may be used as a wildcard. Suppose for example your library has debuggers named "connect:bodyParser", "connect:compress", "connect:session", instead of listing all three with `DEBUG=connect:bodyParser,connect:compress,connect:session`, you may simply do `DEBUG=connect:*`, or to run everything using this module simply use `DEBUG=*`.
You can also exclude specific debuggers by prefixing them with a "-" character. For example, `DEBUG=*,-connect:*` would include all debuggers except those starting with "connect:".
Debug uses [printf-style](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Printf_format_string) formatting. Below are the officially supported formatters:
| Formatter | Representation |
|-----------|----------------|
| `%O` | Pretty-print an Object on multiple lines. |
| `%o` | Pretty-print an Object all on a single line. |
| `%s` | String. |
| `%d` | Number (both integer and float). |
| `%j` | JSON. Replaced with the string '[Circular]' if the argument contains circular references. |
| `%%` | Single percent sign ('%'). This does not consume an argument. |
### Custom formatters
You can add custom formatters by extending the `debug.formatters` object. For example, if you wanted to add support for rendering a Buffer as hex with `%h`, you could do something like: