Hi, I posted a new trace( 'your message' ) function that doesn't require you to pass __FILE_ and __LINE__ at:
http://www.php.net/debug_backtrace#69786
It works by using php's stack trace function, since php can't use macros for appending __FILE_ and __LINE__ automatically like in c++. You can simply add die() to the bottom of trace() if you want execution to stop.