On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 12:02:43PM +0100, Lusercop wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 10:54:29AM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> > And if a talk introducing the perl debugger were given at a YAPC, how many
> > people would think it worthy of going to?
>
> Yes. I'd much rather something introducing it. I have reasonable experience
> with GDB, but I suspect that seeing the comparisons would probably be a
> useful thing. I almost certainly wouldn't goto an advanced perl debugger
> talk, because I don't really know the basics.
>
> ``The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with
> judiciously placed print statements.''
> - Brian W. Kernighan, 1978
>
> So telling us why the perl debugger is better is an extremely good start.
I imagine this is fairly typical. Good Perl programmers, who are
confident with gdb, might have flirted with the Perl debugger but never
really got to grips with it.
I imagine this is because:
- Perl just doesn't let you make the sort of mistakes that you
typically need a C debugger for.
- It's fairly easy to get useful information without using the
debugger.
- print Dumper $x
- Some trick to get a stacktrace on warns and dies.
- With a PERLDB_OPTS incantation, that I always have to look up in
the manpage, you can trace what's happening without having to go
interactive.
- With no compile/link cycle its fairly quick to use these techniques.
- Because of various debugger bugs over the years, and the debugger's
incestuous relationship with perl, it's difficult to feel confident
that what is happening in the debugger is the same as what is
happening outside.
I suspect that most people would be able to learn all they needed by
themselves if they thought it was going to be a useful investment.
I've often thought it might be nice to really understand the debugger,
and I've even started a few times, but I've never had a really pressing
need to do so that I couldn't fulfil fairly easily in some other manner.
--
Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pjcj.net
