Forums Feature Suggestions Trace/Step Through Ability For Script Editor

the ability to trace/step through a script/addon would be very helpful in debugging/writing scripts I think....something that compilers for common programming languages have had for a long time.... just an idea tho! You could see where you were going wrong...watch the values of variables to see when they changed...etc....

PaRaD0x

just add /echo's for that...

the rest is done with debug error messages... see no point why you need it really...

Single step debugging is probably one of the most important advancments in computer programming, to say it has "no point" is really 100% wrong. I mean in order to add this feature OSes were redesigned, processors were redesigned, software was redesigned, if it was useless, why would they have redesigned just about everything just to make it work? It gives you incredible control when debugging, I mean really, do you want to insert an echo line after EVERY line of code in a script? And then have to remove them all once your script is ready for release?

Perhaps a way to jump to an error on error could be implimented..

Or even a way to just simply jump to it yourself.. EX: /jump script.ini 150 50
this would jump to line 150, and 50 characters to the right in script.ini

There is kind of a way to do this...

But it doesn't check for syntax and so forth, it just merely checks your bracketing....


Using the mIRC editor, simply press the little } button, and it will take you to any line that isn't bracketed properly (mostly).

Or you can alternatively use edit > go to line


But I do think a step through "compiler" would be a BRILLIANT feature. Being able to check syntax and errors without using echo statments and /help, and then just praying it works when you start using it (without flooding the server or whatever) would be so damn good.

Here's a Semi-Related Funtime Link.

While I like the Trace idea to "jump to" a line of script that caused an error, eg, double-click on the error that appeared in your Status Window to open the editor at that line... I think the 'Step Through' idea might be too difficult for Khaled to pull off in a single threaded application (as far as the script parser is concerned). Trying to pause the script would pause mIRC... otherwise there would be a /pause command.

- Raccoon

Yes, in a single threaded environment it would be bad, it would result in mIRC freezing, but I believe at one point Khaled said, somewhere down the road, he intends to make it multithreaded.