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189 lines
7.4 KiB
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[#]: subject: "Debugging by starting a REPL at a breakpoint is fun"
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[#]: via: "https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/09/16/debugging-in-a-repl-is-fun/"
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[#]: author: "Julia Evans https://jvns.ca/"
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[#]: collector: "lujun9972"
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[#]: translator: " "
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[#]: reviewer: " "
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[#]: publisher: " "
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[#]: url: " "
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Debugging by starting a REPL at a breakpoint is fun
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======
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Hello! I was talking to a Python programmer friend yesterday about debugging, and I mentioned that I really like debugging using a REPL. He said he’d never tried it and that it sounded fun, so I thought I’d write a quick post about it.
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This debugging method doesn’t work in a lot of languages, but it does work in Python and Ruby and kiiiiiind of in C (via gdb).
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### what’s a REPL?
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REPL stands for “read eval print loop”. A REPL is a program that:
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1. reads some input from you like `print(f"2 + 2 = {2+2}")` (**read**)
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2. evaluates the input (**eval**)
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3. print out the result (**print**)
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4. and then goes back to step 1 (**loop**)
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Here’s an example of me using the IPython REPL to run a print statement. (also it demonstrates f-strings, my favourite Python 3 feature)
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```
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$ ipython3
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Python 3.9.5 (default, May 24 2021, 12:50:35)
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Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
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IPython 7.24.1 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.
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In [1]: print(f"2 + 2 = {2+2}")
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2 + 2 = 4
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In [2]:
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```
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### you can start a REPL at a breakpoint
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There are 2 ways to use a REPL when debugging.
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**Way 1**: Open an empty REPL (like IPython, pry, or a browser Javascript console) to test out something.
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This is great but it’s not what I’m talking about in this post.
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**Way 2**: Set a breakpoint in your program, and start a REPL at that breakpoint.
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This is the one we’re going to be talking about. I like doing this because it gives me both:
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1. all the variables in scope at the breakpoint, so I can print them out interactively
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2. easy access to all the functions in my program, so I can call them to try to find issues
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### how to get a REPL in Python: `ipdb.set_trace()`
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Here’s a program called `test.py` that sets a breakpoint on line 5 using `import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()`.
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```
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import requests
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def make_request():
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result = requests.get("https://google.com")
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import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()
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make_request()
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```
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And here’s what it looks like when you run it: you get a REPL where you can inspect the `result` variable or do anything else you want.
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```
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python3 test.py
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--Return--
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None
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> /home/bork/work/homepage/test.py(5)make_request()
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4 result = requests.get("https://google.com")
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----> 5 import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()
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6
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ipdb> result.headers
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{'Date': 'Thu, 16 Sep 2021 13:11:19 GMT', 'Expires': '-1', 'Cache-Control': 'private, max-age=0', 'Content-Type': 'text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1', 'P3P': 'CP="This is not a P3P policy! See g.co/p3phelp for more info."', 'Content-Encoding': 'gzip', 'Server': 'gws', 'X-XSS-Protection': '0', 'X-Frame-Options': 'SAMEORIGIN', 'Set-Cookie': '1P_JAR=2021-09-16-13; expires=Sat, 16-Oct-2021 13:11:19 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; Secure, NID=223=FXhKNT7mgxX7Fjhh6Z6uej9z13xYKdm9ZuAU540WDoIwYMj9AZzWTgjsVX-KJF6GErxfMijl-uudmjrJH1wgH3c1JjudPcmDMJovNuuAiJqukh1dAao_vUiqL8ge8pSIXRx89vAyYy3BDRrpJHbEF33Hbgt2ce4_yCZPtDyokMk; expires=Fri, 18-Mar-2022 13:11:19 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; HttpOnly', 'Alt-Svc': 'h3=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-29=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-T051=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q050=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q046=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=":443"; ma=2592000,quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43"', 'Transfer-Encoding': 'chunked'}
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```
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You have to install `ipdb` to make this work, but I think it’s worth it – `import pdb; pdb.set_trace()` will work too (and is built into Python) but `ipdb` is much nicer. I just learned that you can also use `breakpoint()` in Python 3 to get a breakpoint, but that puts you in `pdb` too which I don’t like.
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### how to get a REPL in Ruby: `binding.pry`
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Here’s the same thing in Ruby – I wrote a `test.rb` program:
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```
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require 'net/http'
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require 'pry'
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def make_request()
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result = Net::HTTP.get_response('example.com', '/')
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binding.pry
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end
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make_request()
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```
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and here’s what it looks like when I run it:
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```
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$ ruby test.rb
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From: /home/bork/work/homepage/test.rb:6 Object#make_request:
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4: def make_request()
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5: result = Net::HTTP.get_response('example.com', '/')
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=> 6: binding.pry
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7: end
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[1] pry(main)> result.code
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=> "200"
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```
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### you can also do get a REPL in the middle of an HTTP request
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Rails also lets you start a REPL in the middle of a HTTP request and poke around and see what’s happening. I assume you can do this in Flask and Django too – I’ve only really done this in Sinatra (in Ruby).
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### GDB is sort of like a REPL for C
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I was talking to another friend about REPLs, and we agreed that GDB is a little bit like a REPL for C.
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Now, obviously this is sort of not true – C is a compiled language, and you can’t just type in arbitrary C expressions in GDB and have them work.
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But you can do a surprising number of things like:
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* call functions
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* inspect structs if your program has debugging symbols (`p var->field->subfield`)
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This stuff only works in gdb because the gdb developers put in a lot of work doing Very Weird Things to make it easier to get a REPL-like experience. I wrote a blog post a few years called [how does gdb call functions?][1] about how surprising it is that gdb can call functions, and how it does that.
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This is the only way I use `gdb` when looking at C programs – I never set watchpoints or do anything fancy, I just set a couple of breakpoints in the program and then poke around at those points.
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### where this method works
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languages where this works:
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* Python
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* Ruby
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* probably PHP, but I don’t know
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* C, sort of, in a weird way (though you might disagree :))
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languages where this doesn’t work:
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* most compiled languages
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* in Javascript, I think even though you can get a REPL with `node inspect` and `debugger`, the REPL doesn’t integrate well with async functions which makes it less useful. I don’t really understand this yet though. (python’s REPL also doesn’t let you use `await`, but it’s not as big of a deal because async programming in Python isn’t as core a part of the language as in JS)
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### REPL debugging is easy for me to remember how to do
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There are (at least) 4 different ways of debugging:
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1. Lots of print statements
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2. a debugger
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3. getting a REPL at a breakpoint
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4. inspect your program with external tools like strace
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I think part of the reason I like this type of REPL debugging more than using a more traditional debugger is – it’s so easy to remember how to do it! I can just set a breakpoint, and then run code to try to figure out what’s wrong.
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With debuggers, I always forget how to use the debugger (probably partly because I switch programming languages a lot) and I get confused about what features it has and how they work, so I never use it.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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via: https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/09/16/debugging-in-a-repl-is-fun/
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作者：[Julia Evans][a]
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选题：[lujun9972][b]
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译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID)
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校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
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本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
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[a]: https://jvns.ca/
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[b]: https://github.com/lujun9972
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[1]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/01/04/how-does-gdb-call-functions/
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