Debugging

Debugging is also something which once mastered can greatly enhance your bug hunting skills. Most newcomers neglect the importance of the Python debugger (pdb). In this section I am going to tell you only a few important commands. You can learn more about it from the official documentation.

Running from the command line

You can run a script from the command line using the Python debugger. Here is an example:

$ python -m pdb my_script.py

It would cause the debugger to stop the execution on the first statement it finds. This is helpful if your script is short. You can then inspect the variables and continue execution line-by-line.

Running from inside a script

You can set break points in the script itself so that you can inspect the variables and stuff at particular points. This is possible using the pdb.set_trace() method. Here is an example:

import pdb

def make_bread():
    pdb.set_trace()
    return "I don't have time"

print(make_bread())

Try running the above script after saving it. You would enter the debugger as soon as you run it. Now it's time to learn some of the commands of the debugger.

Commands:

c: continue execution
w: shows the context of the current line it is executing.
a: print the argument list of the current function
s: Execute the current line and stop at the first possible occasion.
n: Continue execution until the next line in the current function is reached or it returns.

The difference between next and step is that step stops inside a called function, while next executes called functions at (nearly) full speed, only stopping at the next line in the current function.

These are just a few commands. pdb also supports post mortem. It is also a really handy function. I would highly suggest you to look at the official documentation and learn more about it.

Note:

It might seem unintuitive to use pdb.set_trace() if you are new to this. Fortunately, if you are using Python 3.7+ then you can simply use the breakpoint() [built-in function](https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#breakpoint). It automatically imports pdb and calls pdb.set_trace().

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