Debugging Techniques

Sometimes you can figure out an error just from the symptoms; other times, you must interact with the program or the system to see what's going on. Some of these techniques just re quire a little patience, although others require you to exercise an unusual number of brain cells.

Using a Debugger

Obviously, if you're debugging a program, the first thing that leaps to mind is to use a debugger. For small, standalone programs, a debugger is probably the best way to locate a problem. Even for more complicated programs—servlets, EJBs, even Java Server Pages—you can often use a debugger to step through the code. It might be a little tougher to set up the debugger at first, but after you get it going, it can save you many hours ...

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