.NET Developer Tip
(Receive this column in your inbox,
click Edit your Profile to subscribe.)
The .NET debugging environment
Brian Peek
When you're programming, debugging is probably the most important feature of your tool set. This tip, excerpted from InformIT, discusses some of the features of the debugging environment available in Visual Studio.NET.
Let's start out by taking a look at the most important features of the Visual Studio .NET IDE debugger. You will take a detailed look at all of these as the chapter progresses. Many of these features have existed in the Visual Studio 6.0 IDEs; however, not all were previously available when debugging traditional ASP pages in Visual InterDev.
Call Stack
The call stack enables you to display the list of functions currently called. As the name implies, this can be imagined simply as a stack. (As functions are called from within function, which, in turn, are called from within functions, a stack is created.) With the call stack viewer, you can look at this stack and jump forward and backward into the stack to debug at any point in the chain.
Command Window
If you have used the Visual Basic IDE previously, the command window will be quite familiar to you. The command window enables you to execute program statements separately from the running program. For example, if you want to set a variable equal to a new value, or if you want to print the value of a variable, or even if you want to create an object and call some methods on it, you can do it from this window.
Breakpoints
Breakpoints enable you to stop the execution of a program at a defined point either in all instances or based on a certain set of criteria. The easiest way to set a breakpoint is to click in the gray left margin next to the line where you want to stop. The IDE drops a red "dot" in the margin; when you start the program in debug mode, it stops at that specified position. By popping up the breakpoint window from the debugging windows at the bottom of the screen, you can see all breakpoints currently set in the system.
Watch Window
The watch window can be used to watch the contents of a variable or series of variables. This window also enables you to change the value of a variable, which can be quite useful in debugging applications. You can see an example of the watch window.
Tracing
Tracing simply enables you to write out a series of text messages as the program is executing so that you can see what is happening at any point during the program's life cycle. This can be very useful in creating a log of events that can be inspected later to ensure that the program is operating as you expect in all aspects.
To read the article from which this tip is excerpted, click over to InformIT. You have to register there, but the registration is free.
For More Information:
- Looking for free research? Browse our comprehensive White Papers section by topic, author or keyword.
- Are you tired of technospeak? The Web Services Advisor column uses plain talk without the hype.
- For insightful opinion and commentary from today's industry leaders, read our Guest Commentary columns.
- Hey Codeheads! Start benefiting from other time-saving XML Developer Tips and .NET Developer Tips.
- Visit our huge Best Web Links for Web Services collection for the freshest editor-selected resources.
- Choking on the alphabet soup of industry acronyms? Visit our helpful Glossary for the latest lingo.
- Visit Ask the Experts for answers to your Web services, SOAP, WSDL, XML, .NET, Java and EAI questions.
- Discuss this issue, voice your opinion or just talk with your peers in the SearchWebServices Discussion Forums.
