Is it possible to skip over an abitrary amount of a loop during debug?? Visual Studio

Question

I am trying to find an error in my code. The problem is the error occurs in a loop. But the loop iterates about 500 times. Instead of clicking through the loop. Is it possible to skip over a certain amount of the loop ??

Suwannee

Answer 1

VS allows you to set a condition on a breakpoint in terms of variables that are in scope. So, in your case, you can test against the loop counter.

Trapezoid

ok, I found it. Just right click on the break point and select hit count – Suwannee

Answer 2

Here is a crude answer:

if ((iter % 10) == 0) {
    int stop = 1;
}

Then place a break-point at "int stop = 1;". Perhaps, there is a better way in VS but this is what I do from time-to-time.

Bind

Quite. Just take the code out before you check in lest you make thedailywtf. – Bussard

If you want to do that, surround that code with #ifdef DEBUG / #endif so that it's not part of your production build. – Benzofuran

Conditional break-points can sometimes slow down your execution speed by a ridiculous amount. So if you need to skip millions or iterations instead of hundreds, this method can help preserve sanity. – Motorway

Answer 3

You can assign new values to variables during debug session. Step through the loop statements as many times as you like, then set your loop counter (or whatever other vars maintain loop condition) to terminate the loop.

Ozuna

I'm not sure this is what he's looking for but something every programmer should know anyway. – Stratocracy

Answer 4

Yes. It's possible to skip exact loop counts with native VSCode debugger.

Steps:

1. Right click on breakpoint (red dot) inside editor

2. Click Edit Breakpoint...

3. Select Hit Count from dropdown menu

4. Set number of loops to skip and press enter

5. Run debugger with f5

Prober

This is a good answer for VSCode, but the question was about Visual Studio (not Code). – Tamikotamil

Good point there. I found this topic by searching exactly for 'VSCode', may considering this actual for today. Also possible dupes: #59016293 #76640714 – Prober

Answer 5

Just put the breakpoint in the loop like indicated below >>. Use F5 to get to the condition that causes failure so you can loop through the individual pass. How to know where to break is up to you.

for (int i = 0; i < LOOPMAX; i++) {
>>some_proc(i);
  some_other_proc(i);
  some_third_proc(i);
}

By pressing F5 it'll continue running till it gets to the next breakpoint (the next pass through the code). Sure you'll have to hit it 500 times, but that beats some thousands of times. Combine this with @Troubador code above.

PS: This answer IS really simple, but some people don't know they can do this.

Cupola