On 29/05/2021 19:10, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > On Sat, 29 May 2021 09:51:04 -0700 (PDT), Rich Shepard > <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> declaimed the following:
>> What I find interesting is that every web page I find on 'using pdb' does no >> more than explain the available commands; they don't explain the debugging >> process. That's like showing someone what the word processor menus do; it >> doesn't teach the user how to be a writer. I would point out that my book on learning to program included a chapter on using debugging, half of which was on pdb and how to use it. But that book is now over 20 years old and based on Python 1.5.3! but interestingly nearly all the reviewers specifically praised my inclusion of a chapter on debugging. >> I knew the debugging process with Fortran and C, but haven't learned how to >> effectively use pdb to find bugs that don't issue a traceback or obvious >> wrong answer such as my module displaying an empty window with no widgets. Like most debuggers, set breakpoints, watchpoints and variable traces. > The only debugger I used to be familiar with was that of (Open)VMS. My first job after graduating was writing white-box test scripts for a PABX control system. It was done by writing VMS Debug scripts and then running those scripts with various input files to provide the different initialization settings. I wrote around 100K lines of debug scripts to test around 60K lines of C. It was an amazingly powerful debugger. > I don't even want to think of GDB... I used gdb a few years after VMS DBG and thought it a dreadfully primitive beast by comparison. The scripting and automation features in particular were arcane by comparison. But they are all more similar to pdb than to winpdb. Maybe the OP could consider IDLE, it would at least be closer to an IDE debugger than pdb! And in its latest incarnations Idle is becoming a fairly useful tool once more. -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list