Re: debug command

[John W. Eaton]

On  7-Sep-2006, Paul Kienzle wrote:

| On Sep 7, 2006, at 5:30 PM, frank wang wrote:
| 
| > Hi,
| >  
| > From octave.sourceforge.net/compatibility.html, it says that following 
| > debugging commands exit in octave:
| > debug_on_error, dbstop, dbclear, quit, dbwhere dbg_cont, dbg_step, 
| > dbg_next, dbstatus.
| >  
| > However, I cannot use dbg_step, dbg_next, dbg_cont. When I type which 
| > dbg_step in octave, it is undefined. Can anyone tell me how to find 
| > and use these commands?
| 
| Looking in input.cc, it seems they've been renamed:
| 
|      exit, quit, return, dbcont   for dbg_cont
|      dbstep  for dbg_step
|      dbnext for dbg_next
| 
| I make this change and move the FAQ to the wiki:
| 
|       http://wiki.octave.org/wiki.pl?MatlabOctaveCompatibility
| 
| Please contribute comments there.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that the debug/keyboard mode
is not quite a normal Octave prompt so things like multi-line commands
don't work.  It is really just capable of displaying values and
interpreting a few special debug commands like dbnext.  Also, commands
like dbnext are not normal functions.  Instead, they are handled
specially by the code that reads debug-mode commands so that's why
they aren't found at the normal Octave prompt and they don't have
normal docstrings.  It would be nice to fix these problems, but I
don't have the time or interest to do it.  Contributions are welcome.

jwe