From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5265ce03ee8f5252 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-01-06 20:36:45 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!news.gv.tsc.tdk.com!falcon.america.net!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ok sorry, it is just a book gives no feedback. Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 04:19:38 GMT Organization: Deja.com Message-ID: <938qom$ptd$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <931r2l$4ai5t$2@ID-25716.news.dfncis.de> <931t08$5u5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <932632$e0e$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <932an8$ijs$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <93421h$2ju$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <934j5c$eu9$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <937jk6$s6l$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <9386t0$av0$1@nnrp1.deja.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Jan 07 04:19:38 2001 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; U) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x53.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:3737 Date: 2001-01-07T04:19:38+00:00 List-Id: In article , Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) wrote: > Are there many such debuggers still in use for major > operating systems ? I remember something called ODT (Octal > Debugging Tool) for the PDP-8, but I think a lot of people do > not even remember the PDP-8. You miss my point, I am not talking about symbolic debugging, but cases where elaborate logic is required for detecting and logging an error situation. I know of no debuggers where it is easy to program complex functions that operate comfortably within the target environment. For example, suppose you have logic which expects that a certain number should always satisfy certain constraints, due to logic in the program. You suspect that at some point, you have a value that does not meet these constraints. Basically what you want to add is a check to see if these conditions are met (arbitrarily complex code), and if they are not met, dump out various complex information at a high level of abstraction. This is not a task that is within reach of typical debuggers! I find that people who "detest" certain styles of working and working environments sometimes lack the flexibility to deal with difficult situations. It sounds for instance like you would be really stuck if you were in a hiesenbug situation where the bug does not appear if you operate in the presence of the debugger. This can most certainly happen with some kinds of erroneous programs, or where timing problems are an issue. Indeed in real time programs, the paradigm of breakpoint and examine often breaks down badly. Yes, there are some asyncrhonous debugging tools around (like OCS Aprobe) which can be very valuable in such situations, but sometimes, a judiciously placed put_line can be the most efficient and effective debugging approach. If you are sure you "detest" such an approach, you may end up proceeding in less than an optimal manner. Flexibility is always a plus. Note that when using GDB, there is a very useful hybrid approach that is often very attractive, which is to write debugging routines that output information in a suitable high level abstract form (see for example the pn routine in GNAT for printing an AST node). Then the routine is called from the debugger. For example, when we are debugging the GNAT compiler itself, we write as a gdb command: pn (125) and this prints the contents of node 125 in a high level symbolic form. But this capability requires that the debugging routines be able to do output, so you run into the same Pure/Preelaborable situations. Larry, I take it you are still stuck in an Ada 83 environment, where this particular issue does not arise? (I say that because it is quite a familiar problem to Ada 95 programmers :-) Robert Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/