Introduction

Hi, my name is Lambdebug. I can show you how a Clojure program is executed step by step. With a little trick I’ve learned from Einstein, I can even travel back in time, and show you the steps backwards.

It’s easy to meet me. Ask Mr Leiningen to get me from clojars (including :dev-dependencies [[lambdebug "0.3.3"]] in your project.clj) Then just say these sentences to the REPL,

=> (use 'lambdebug)
=> (debug '(+ 1 2))

And voilá, you’re right in the middle of my world. I even made the first step for you, you can see it highlighted.

Function: Given at REPL
Form: ("+" 1 2)
Result: #'clojure.core/+
>>>

You can step into this complicated expression typing i, and learn the value of each number, then finally that (+ 1 2) equals to 3. If you type h, you’ll see all the directions I can take you.

>>> h
Help: choose
    step (i)n, (n)ext, (b)ack, (p)rev, (o)ut

I can do more sophisticated things. Try a bit contrived example,

=> (debug
      '(doseq [i [10 0]]
         (try
           (+ (/ 1 y) 2)
           (catch ArithmeticException _ "oops"))))

When you first step through it, i is bound to 10, and you’ll get the value of (+ (/ 1 10) 2). On the secound round, an exception is thrown, so you won’t get to adding 2, but you land in the catch block, evaluating "oops".

I can see that you are not quite happy yet. You have written some nifty functions.

(ns nifty)

(defn count-both
  [x y]
  (+ (count x) (count y)))

(defn duplicate
  [x]
  (if (seq? x)
    (concat x x)
    [x x]))

No problem, I will follow you into any function defined in a file (with the exception of the clojure namespace),

=> (use 'nifty)
=> (debug '(count-both [42] (duplicate [42])))

In case you want to know more about me, I am an open source person, you can come and see me at http://github.com/adamschmideg/lambdebug

I am not perfect

My limitations are,

• I don’t understand type hints.
• I respect privacy and I don’t mess with private functions.
• Did I say I hate feeling dizzy? No loop, no recur.
• I am OK with most common macros, but not with trickier ones, like binding, ->, ->>.
• I am quite picky about java interop. I like simpler cases with dot notation, but no proxy, doto, etc, please.
• No outer binding at the REPL, like (let [answer 42] ...). It’s OK to bind a variable within a function, like (for [i (range 9)] ...), or even (map #(* 2 %) ...). It’s also OK to have them in a function defined in a file.

If you bump into a limitation, bug, annoyance not listed here, feel free let me know about it at http://github.com/adamschmideg/lambdebug/issues.

Inspiration

I was inspired by Complete Tracing and by the way NewLISP can be debugged.

Do you want more?

Check out details.

Most recent blog posts

• 09 Oct 2010 » Integrated and distributed issue tracking
• 30 Aug 2010 » When picking a library, check how it's version-controlled
• 25 Aug 2010 » Rainbow debugging
• 19 Aug 2010 » Replace a substring and a subtree at the same time
• 17 Aug 2010 » My dreams of exception handling