A Debugger is a REPL is a Debugger

8 comments

• porridgeraisin 6 months ago

    $ alias breakpoint
    alias breakpoint='
        while read -p"Debugging(Ctrl-d to exit)> " debugging_line
        do
            eval "$debugging_line"
        done
    '
  

  Good breakpoint repl you can insert anywhere in a bash script
• attila-lendvai 6 months ago

  in (Common) Lisp it has been like that forever.

  the debugger is just a REPL started in a peculiar environment that has e.g. some extra restarts registered by the error handler.

• fooker 6 months ago

  Sure, a 1980s debugger.

  Modern debuggers have specialized capabilities way beyond the reach of REPLs.

  Reverse debugging and debugging optimized programs come to mind.

• shmerl 6 months ago

  With nvim-dap-ui you can evaluate an expression by selecting it, and it would try to evaluate anything custom you do in the editor that wasn't in the original code.

  Try something like this:

      :lua require('dapui').eval()
  

  For running to the current cursor:

      :lua require('dap').run_to_cursor()
  

  Assign that to keys that you want.

  It works with gdb's DAP adapter.

• john-h-k 6 months ago

  `b line` and `expr expr` both work fine in lldb. I agree the ergonomics are less excellent, but that doesn't seem a reason to completely abandon lldb/gdb to me. Maybe I am missing something

• Moomoomoo309 6 months ago

  If you're using IntelliJ, you can also right click the breakpoints and set conditions, or set a breakpoint to not suspend execution, but to activate another breakpoint so you can wait for a condition or line of code to be reached before the other breakpoint does anything. Super useful for debugging specific scenarios so you don't need to set up the context repeatedly.

• 6 months ago
  [deleted]
• nilskch 6 months ago

  When writing Python in VSCode you get a REPL when you hit a break point and I think that's sweet.