Interesting, I'm halfway between - I never use the perl debugger, but I use gdb extensively for debugging C programs (often perl itself).

One difference is that when I'm looking at C code it's far more likely to be written by someone else, but I still use gdb for my own C code, and print statements for the rare occasions I'm looking into someone else's perl code.

Another part of it is that I tend to find bugs in tools: I got into the habit of using a debugger for C programs to show me the assembler code for each statement, because one of the first C compilers I used had a lot of code generation bugs. When I encounter or suspect a bug in perl, again it's the C-level debugger I turn to, this time because I actually have the opportunity to fix the bug myself.

Conversely, if I were to encounter a bug in gcc code generation and felt brave enough to try and fix it myself, I'd probably use both gdb and sprinkled prints to help me understand the flow.

Hugo

In reply to Re^2: I never use the debugger. by hv
in thread I never use the debugger. by friedo

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