A Dynamic Debugging System for MDL,

Abstract

Program debugging is a time consuming process. Conventional debugging techniques and aids typically give the user a narrow view of the program's operation, making debugging difficult. A debugging system that would present a clear overall picture of a program's behavior and would be both flexible and simple to operate would be a valuable tool. Such a system was designed and implemented in and for MDL, a high-level applicative programming language. This report discusses: the design alternatives considered during the debugging system's design and implementation phases, the reasons for the resulting design choices, and the system attributes. A major attribute of the system (MEND) is that it does not simulate the program being debugged but instead monitors it from another process. This attribute results in a robust and viable debugging system, because MEND need not be modified in order to handle each new extension to MDL and/or each new user-defined primitive. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1978
Accession Number
ADA050191

Entities

People

  • Joel Mayer Berez

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Assembly Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Debugging
  • Information Systems
  • Language
  • Machine Languages
  • Military Research
  • Operating Systems
  • Programming Languages
  • Simulations
  • Simulators
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

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  • Computational Linguistics
  • Software Engineering
  • Software Engineering.