If you have any additions, corrections, ideas, or bug reports please stop by the
Builder Academy at telnet://tbamud.com:9091 or email rumble@tbamud.com -- Rumble

The Art of Debugging 
Originally by Michael Chastain and Sammy

The following documentation is excerpted from Merc 2.0’s hacker.txt file. It 
was written by Furey of MERC Industries and is included here with his 
permission. We have packaged it with tbaMUD (changed in a couple of places, 
such as specific filenames) because it offers good advice and insight into the 
art and science of software engineering. More information about tbaMUD, 
can be found at the tbaMUD home page http://tbamud.com.

1 “I’m running a Mud so I can learn C programming!” 

Yeah, right. The purpose of this document is to record some of our knowledge,
experience and philosophy. No matter what your level, we hope that this 
document will help you become a better software engineer. Remember that 
engineering is work, and no document will substitute for your own thinking, 
learning and experimentation. 

2 How to Learn in the First Place 

Play with something. 
Read the documentation on it. 
Play with it some more. 
Read documentation again. 
Play with it some more. 
Read documentation again. 
Play with it some more. 
Read documentation again. 
Get the idea? 

The idea is that your mind can accept only so much “new data” in a single 
session. Playing with something doesn’t introduce very much new data, but it 
does transform data in your head from the “new” category to the “familiar” 
category. Reading documentation doesn’t make anything “familiar,” but it 
refills your “new” hopper. 

Most people, if they even read documentation in the first place, never return
to it. They come to a certain minimum level of proficiency and then never 
learn any more. But modern operating systems, languages, networks, and even 
applications simply cannot be learned in a single session. You have to work 
through the two-step learning cycle many times to master it. 

3 Basic Unix Tools 

man gives you online manual pages.

grep stands for “global regular expression print;” searches for strings in text 
files. 

vi, emacs, jove use whatever editor floats your boat, but learn the hell out 
of it; you should know every command in your editor.

ctags mags “tags” for your editor which allows you to go to functions by name 
in any source file.

>, >>, <, | input and output redirection at the command line; get someone to 
show you, or dig it out of “man csh” 

These are the basic day-in day-out development tools. Developing without 
knowing how to use all of these well is like driving a car without knowing 
how to change gears. 

4 Debugging: Theory 

Debugging is a science. You formulate a hypothesis, make predictions based on 
the hypothesis, run the program and provide it experimental input, observe its 
behavior, and confirm or refute the hypothesis. 

A good hypothesis is one which makes surprising predictions which then come 
true; predictions that other hypotheses don’t make. 

The first step in debugging is not to write bugs in the first place. This 
sounds obvious, but sadly, is all too often ignored. 

If you build a program, and you get any errors or any warnings, you should fix
them before continuing. C was designed so that many buggy ways of writing code
are legal, but will draw warnings from a suitably smart compiler (such as “gcc”
with the -Wall flag enabled). It takes only minutes to check your warnings and
 to fix the code that generates them, but it takes hours to find bugs otherwise.

“Desk checking” (proof reading) is almost a lost art these days. Too bad. You 
should desk check your code before even compiling it, and desk-check it again 
periodically to keep it fresh in mind and find new errors. If you have someone
in your group whose only job it is to desk-check other people’s code, that 
person will find and fix more bugs than everyone else combined. 

One can desk-check several hundred lines of code per hour. A top-flight 
software engineer will write, roughly, 99% accurate code on the first pass, 
which still means one bug per hundred lines. And you are not top flight. So...
you will find several bugs per hour by desk checking. This is a very rapid bug
fixing technique. Compare that to all the hours you spend screwing around with
broken programs trying to find one bug at a time. 

The next technique beyond desk-checking is the time-honored technique of 
inserting “print” statements into the code, and then watching the logged 
values. Within tbaMUD code, you can call printf(), fprintf(), or log()to dump 
interesting values at interesting times. Where and when to dump these values 
is an art, which you will learn only with practice. 

If you don’t already know how to redirect output in your operating system, now 
is the time to learn. On Unix, type the command “man csh”, and read the part 
about the “>” operator. You should also learn the difference between “standard 
output” (for example, output from “printf”) and “standard error” (for example, 
output from “fprintf(stderr, ...)”). 

Ultimately, you cannot fix a program unless you understand how it is operating 
in the first place. Powerful debugging tools will help you collect data, but 
they can’t interpret it, and they can’t fix the underlying problems. Only you 
can do that. 

When you find a bug... your first impulse will be to change the code, kill the 
manifestation of the bug, and declare it fixed. Not so fast! The bug you 
observe is often just the symptom of a deeper bug. You should keep pursuing the
bug, all the way down. You should grok the bug and cherish it in fullness 
before causing its discorporation. 

Also, when finding a bug, ask yourself two questions: “What design and 
programming habits led to the introduction of the bug in the first place?” And:
“What habits would systematically prevent the introduction of bugs like this?” 

5 Debugging: Tools 

When a Unix process accesses an invalid memory location, or (more rarely) 
executes an illegal instruction, or (even more rarely) something else goes 
wrong, the Unix operating system takes control. The process is incapable of 
further execution and must be killed. Before killing the process, however, the
operating system does something for you: it opens a file named “core” and 
writes the entire data space of the process into it. 

Thus, “dumping core” is not a cause of problems, or even an effect of problems.
It’s something the operating system does to help you find fatal problems which 
have rendered your process unable to continue. 

One reads a “core” file with a debugger. The two most popular debuggers on Unix
are adb and gdb, although occasionally one finds dbx. Typically one starts a 
debugger like this: “gdb bin/circle” or “gdb bin/circle lib/core”. 

The first thing, and often the only thing, you need to do inside the debugger 
is take a stack trace. In adb, the command for this is “$c”. In gdb, the 
command is “backtrace”. In dbx, the command is “where”. The stack trace will 
tell you what function your program was in when it crashed, and what functions
were calling it. The debugger will also list the arguments to these functions. 
Interpreting these arguments, and using more advanced debugger features, 
requires a fair amount of knowledge about assembly language programming. 

6 Using GDB

GDB has some online help, though it is not the best.  It does at least give
a summary of commands and what they're supposed to do.  What follows is
Sammy's short intro to gdb with some bughunting notes following it:

tbaMUD allows multiple core files to be created. Be sure to delete them when
you are done. If you've got a core file, go to your lib directory and type:

> dir

You should see the core files listed, something like:
core.#

To use the core file type:
> gdb ../bin/circle core.#

If you want to hunt bugs in real time (causing bugs to find the cause as
opposed to checking a core to see why the MUD crashed earlier) use:

> gdb bin/circle

If you're working with a core, gdb should show you where the crash occurred. 
If you get an actual line that failed, you've got it made. If not, the
included message should help.  If you're working in real time, now's the
time to crash the MUD so you can see what gdb catches.

When you've got the crash info, you can type ``where'' to see which function
called the crash function, which function called that one, and so on all the
way up to ``main()''.

I should explain about ``context''  You may type ``print ch'' which you
would expect to show you the ch variable, but if you're in a function that
doesn't get a ch passed to it (real_mobile, etc), you can't see ch because
it's not in that context.  To change contexts (the function levels you saw
with where) type ``up'' to go up.  You start at the bottom, but once you go
up, and up, and up, you can always go back ``down''.  You may be able to go
up a couple functions to see a function with ch in it, if finding out who
caused the crash is useful (it normally isn't).

The ``print'' command is probably the single most useful command, and lets
you print any variable, and arithmetic expressions (makes a nice calculator
if you know C math).  Any of the following are valid and sometimes useful:

print ch (fast way to see if ch is a valid pointer, 0 if it's not)
print *ch (prints the contents of ch, rather than the pointer address)
print ch->player.name (same as GET_NAME(ch))
print world[ch->in_room].number (vnum of the room the char is in)
etc..

Note that you can't use macros (all those handy psuedo functions like GET_NAME
and GET_MAX_HIT), so you'll have to look up the full structure path of 
variables you need.

Type ``list'' to see the source before and after the line you're currently
looking at.  There are other list options but I'm unfamiliar with them.

There are only a couple of commands to use in gdb, though with some patience
they can be very powerful.  The only commands I've ever used are:

run                     well, duh.
print [variable]        also duh, though it does more than you might think
list                    shows you the source code in context
break [function]        set a breakpoint at a function
clear [function]        remove a breakpoint
step                    execute one line of code
cont                    continue running after a break or ctrl-c

I've run into nasty problems quite a few times.  The cause is often a memory
problem, usually with pointers, pointers to nonexistent memory. If you free
a structure, or a string or something, the pointer isn't always set to NULL,
so you may have code that checks for a NULL pointer that thinks the pointer
is ok since it's not NULL.  You should make sure you always set pointers to
NULL after freeing them.

Ok, now for the hard part.  If you know where the problem is, you should be
able to duplicate it with a specific sequence of actions. That makes things
much easier.  What you'll have to do is pick a function to ``break'' at. 
The ideal place to break is immediately before the crash.  For example, if
the crash occurred when you tried to save a mob with medit, you might be
able to ``break mobs_to_file''.  Try that one first.

When you `medit save', the MUD will hang.  GDB will either give you segfault
info, or it will be stopped at the beginning of mobs_to_file.  If it
segfaulted, pick an earlier function, like copy_mobile, or even do_medit.

When you hit a breakpoint, print the variables that are passed to the
function to make sure they look ok.  Note that printing the contents of
pointers is possible with a little playing around.  For example, if you
print ch, you get a hex number that shows you the memory location where ch
is at.  It's a little helpful, but try print *ch and you'll notice that it
prints the contents of the ch structure, which is usually more useful. 
print ch->player will give you the name of the person who entered the
command you're looking at, and some other info. If you get a no ch in this
context it is because the ch variable wasn't passed to the function you're
currently looking at.

Ok, so now you're ready to start stepping.  When GDB hit your breakpoint, it
showed you the first line of executable code in your function, which will
sometimes be in your variable declarations if you initialized any variables
(ex: int i = 0).  As you're stepping through lines of code, you'll see one
line at a time.  Note that the line you see hasn't been run yet.  It's
actually the _next_ line to be executed.  So if the line is a = b + c;,
printing a will show you what a was before this line, not the sum of b and
c. If you have an idea of where the crash is occurring, you can keep
stepping till you get to that part of the code (tip: pressing return will
repeat the last GDB command, so you can type step once, then keep pressing
return to step quickly).  If you have no idea where the problem is, the
quick and dirty way to find your crash is to keep pressing return rapidly
(don't hold the eturn key or you'll probably miss it).  When you get the seg
fault, you can't step any more, so it should be obvious when that happens.

Now that you've found the exact line where you get the crash, you should
start the MUD over and step more slowly this time. What I've found that
works really well to save time is to create a dummy function.  This one will
work just fine:

void dummy(void){}

Put that somewhere in the file you're working on.  Then, right before the
crash, put a call to dummy in the code (ex: dummy();).  Then set your
breakpoint at dummy, and when you hit the breakpoint, step once to get back
to the crashing code.

Now you're in total control.  You should be looking at the exact line that
gave you the crash last time.  Print *every* variable on this line.  Chances
are one of them will be a pointer to an unaccessable memory location.  For
example, printing ch->player.name may give you an error.  If it does, work
your way back and print ch->player to make sure that one's valid, and if it
isn't, try printing ch.

Somewhere in there you're going to have an invalid pointer.  Once you know
which one it is, it's up to you to figure out why it's invalid. You may have
to move dummy() up higher in the code and step slowly, checking your pointer
all the way to see where it changes from valid to invalid.  You may just
need to NULL a free'd pointer, or you may have to add a check for a NULL
pointer, or you may have screwed up a loop.  I've done all that and more :)

Well, that's it in a nutshell.  There's a lot more to GDB that I haven't
even begun to learn, but if you get comfortable with print and stepping you
can fix just about any bug.  I spent hours on the above procedure trying to
get my ascii object and mail saving working right, but it could have taken
weeks without gdb.  The only other suggestion I have is to check out the
online gdb help.  It's not very helpful for learning, but you can see what
commands are available and play around with them to see if you can find any
new tools.

7 Profiling 

Another useful technique is “profiling,” to find out where your program is 
spending most of its time. This can help you to make a program more efficient.

Here is how to profile a program: 

1. Remove all the .o files and the “circle” executable: 
make clean 

2. Edit your Makefile, and change the PROFILE=line: 
PROFILE = -p 

3. Remake circle: 
make 

4. Run circle as usual. Shutdown the game with the shutdown command when you 
have run long enough to get a good profiling base under normal usage 
conditions. If you crash the game, or kill the process externally, you won’t 
get profiling information. 

5. Run the profcommand: 
prof bin/circle > prof.out 

6. Read prof.out. Run “man prof” to understand the format of the output. For 
advanced profiling, you can use “PROFILE = -pg” in step 2, and use the “gprof” 
command in step 5. The “gprof” form of profiling gives you a report which lists
exactly how many times any function calls any other function. This information
is valuable for debugging as well as performance analysis. 

Availability of “prof” and “gprof” varies from system to system. Almost every
Unix system has “prof”. Only some systems have “gprof”. 

7 Books for Serious Programmers 

Out of all the thousands of books out there, three stand out: 

Kernighan and Plaugher, “The Elements of Programming Style” 
Kernighan and Ritchie, “The C Programming Language” 
Brooks, “The Mythical Man Month” 