why doesn't this work?????

i keep getting the following error with the code segment below when i try to compile the program.

parse error before '('
parse error before ')'
stray '\' in program

this is the code segment and the error is on the second line of the segment

#define DEBUG(fmt) if(traceflag) { \
fprintf(stderr, fmt, arg1); \
.
.
.

Thank you in advance to all who reply to this thread

Your syntax looks legal and I could not get it to fail. My best guess is that you have trailing whitespace characters after the backslash on the first line. The newline character on the first line must be immediately preceded by a backslash for this to work.