what is debugging

                                    what is debugging

 DEBUGGING:

After a failure has been detected, it is necessary to first identify the program statement(s) that are in error and are responsible for the failure, the error can then be fixed. In this Section, we shall summarise the important approaches that are available to identify the error locations. Each of these approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages and therefore each will be useful in appropriate circumstances. We also provide some guidelines for effective debugging.

What is DEBUGGING:

A DEBUGGING is a computer program used by programmers to test and debug a target program. Debuggers may use instruction-set simulators, rather than running a program directly on the processor to achieve a higher level of control over its execution. This allows debuggers to stop or halt the program according to specific conditions. However, use of simulators decreases execution speed.

 Debugging Approaches:

The following debugging Approaches are some of the approaches that are popularly adopted by the programmers for debugging:

Brute force method:

This is the most common method of debugging but is the least efficient method. In this approach, print statements are inserted throughout the program to print the intermediate values with the hope that some of the printed values will help to identify the statement in error. This approach becomes more systematic with the use of a symbolic debugger (also called a source code debugger), because values of different variables can be easily checked and break points and watchpoints can be easily set to test the values of variables effortlessly. Single stepping using a symbolic a debugger is another form of this approach, where the developer mentally computes the expected result after every source instruction and checks whether the same is computed by single-stepping through the program.