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  • DEBUG feature

    From gah4@21:1/5 to All on Tue Aug 23 18:02:01 2022
    As mentioned in another thread, some Fortran compilers
    have a special DEBUG feature. For each program unit
    (main program, subroutine, or function) before the END
    statement, you can put a DEBUG statement.

    Some options of the DEBUG statement itself allow for
    subscript bounds checking for some or all arrays, tracing
    of execution of numbered statements, and changes to the
    values of some or all variables.

    In addition, one can add debugging statements to be
    executed at different parts of the program, with all the
    statements placed in debug packets, just before the END
    statement.

    DEBUG
    AT 10
    DISPLAY X,Y,Z
    END

    will, just before executing statement 10 print (NAMELIST
    like) the values of the indicated variables. You can put most
    statements inside a debug packet, so even:

    DEBUG
    AT 10
    GOTO 20

    Even worse than a COME FROM statement, there is no sign
    at either statement 10 or 20 about what it does.

    More usual, you would do something like:

    DEBUG
    AT 10
    TRACE ON
    AT 20
    TRACE OFF
    END

    so statement number tracing only happens between
    those statements.

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  • From John@21:1/5 to All on Tue Aug 23 19:19:49 2022
    Wow. Thought that was long gone. It has been long enough since I used it that my memory might be tainted by time; but I remember that as the best debugging feature ever.

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  • From gah4@21:1/5 to John on Tue Aug 23 22:58:18 2022
    On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 7:19:51 PM UTC-7, John wrote:
    Wow. Thought that was long gone. It has been long enough since I used it that my
    memory might be tainted by time; but I remember that as the best debugging feature ever.

    Well, Fortran G is still around, but it was only today that I looked it up for VS Fortran.

    I never actually got to use VS Fortran, the newest of the Fortran compilers for OS/360 and its descendants.

    I did debug some large programs with WATFIV, which has bounds checking and undefined variable checking always enabled. (The latter checks for all bytes containing X'81'. It will fail for CHARACTER*1 with 'a' in it.)

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  • From Robin Vowels@21:1/5 to All on Tue Aug 23 23:32:37 2022
    On Wednesday, August 24, 2022 at 11:02:03 AM UTC+10, gah4 wrote:
    As mentioned in another thread, some Fortran compilers
    have a special DEBUG feature. For each program unit
    (main program, subroutine, or function) before the END
    statement, you can put a DEBUG statement.
    .
    From the beginning, PL/I offered subscript bounds checking,
    integer decimal and binary overflow checking, floating-point overflow
    checking, division by zero checking, and many others.
    All with facility to recover, to print diagnostic information
    such as the values of variables.
    As well, there was a CHECK option in which variable names
    could be included. When the value of a named variable was changed,
    PL/I automatically printed the new value.
    .
    Some options of the DEBUG statement itself allow for
    subscript bounds checking for some or all arrays, tracing
    of execution of numbered statements, and changes to the
    values of some or all variables.

    In addition, one can add debugging statements to be
    executed at different parts of the program, with all the
    statements placed in debug packets, just before the END
    statement.

    DEBUG
    AT 10
    DISPLAY X,Y,Z
    END

    will, just before executing statement 10 print (NAMELIST
    like) the values of the indicated variables. You can put most
    statements inside a debug packet, so even:

    DEBUG
    AT 10
    GOTO 20

    Even worse than a COME FROM statement, there is no sign
    at either statement 10 or 20 about what it does.

    More usual, you would do something like:

    DEBUG
    AT 10
    TRACE ON
    AT 20
    TRACE OFF
    END

    so statement number tracing only happens between
    those statements.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)