8: Appendix C - Debugging
- Page ID
- 15325
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Although there are debugging suggestions throughout the book, we thought it would be useful to organize them in an appendix. If you are having a hard time debugging, you might want to review this appendix from time to time.
The best debugging strategy depends on what kind of error you have:
- Compile-time errors indicate that there is something wrong with the syntax of the program. Example: omitting the semicolon at the end of a statement.
- Run-time errors are produced if something goes wrong while the program is running. Example: an infinite recursion eventually causes a
StackOverflowError
. - Logic errors cause the program to do the wrong thing. Example: an expression may not be evaluated in the order you expect.
The following sections are organized by error type; some techniques are useful for more than one type.