Debugging algorithms

There is a debugger we can run in Python using the breakpoint() function (which is built-in). We can introduce this code into our program and insert it where we are unsure of our code. Adding breakpoint() will then check for bugs and errors. When we run a breakpoint() function, we'll get a pdb output, which stands for Python Debugger. As a note, this built-in function appears in Python 3.7 and newer versions. The previous debugger for Python 3.6 and older was pdb.set_trace().

When we run the debugger, we can use four commands:

• c: Continues the execution
• q: Quits the debugger/execution
• n: Steps to the next line within the function
• s: Steps to the next line in this function or a called function

Let's take a look at a code and run each of the commands outlined:

ch7_debugger.py

number = 5
number2 = 'five'
print(number)
breakpoint()
print(number2)

Looking at this code, you can see the breakpoint() command after...