Microsoft 9GD00001 manual 159, Step Operations

Chapter 6: Debugging with Visual Studio 159

Operation

Explanation

Step Over	Executes the code in the current line and moves to the next line of code where
	it again pauses, waiting for your instruction. Perform a Step Over by selecting
	Debug Step Over, pressing F10, or clicking the Step Over button in the toolbar.
	You can also right- click and select this option. Most Visual Studio developers will
	have the F10 shortcut memorized in short order.
Step Into Specific	When the current line is on a method call, a Step Into will move control to the first
	line of the method being called and execution will pause there. Perform the Step
	Into by selecting Debug Step Into, pressing F11, or clicking the Step Into button in
	the toolbar. F11 is the fastest way for you to do this operation.
Step Out	If you’re in a method, you can move back to the caller by performing a Step Out
	operation. Perform a Step Out by selecting Debug Step Out, pressing SHIFT-F11, or
	clicking the Step Out button on the toolbar. Note that no lines of code are skipped
	inside the function; they still run following your program’s logic. Your program will
	automatically pause at the line of code following this function’s return.
Run to Cursor	Sometimes you want to execute a block of code and stop at a certain line. You
	could set another breakpoint and run until you hit the breakpoint. However, a
	quicker way when you don’t want to keep a new breakpoint around is to right-click
	the line you want to stop at and select Run To Cursor. Again, no lines of code are
	skipped; the program will merely pause when it gets to the line you placed your
	cursor on. Optionally, you can click the line to run to and press CTRL-F10. This is
	particularly useful if you don’t feel like stepping through every iteration of a loop.
Set Next Statement	You can skip forward and backward over multiple lines of code without executing
	the skipped code. For example, it’s easy to step over a method, only to realize
	that you really wanted to step into that method. You don’t want to restart the
	application unless you need to. To get back to that line of code so that you can
	step into the method call, select the yellow arrow in the margin and drag it back
	up to the method call. Then you can do a Step Into. Alternatively, if you have one
	or more statements that you don’t want to execute, drag the yellow arrow in the
	margin to the statement following the code you don’t want to run and then use
	stepping operations to resume your debugging session. This technique is also
	quite handy when you are using the Edit and Continue feature, where you can
	change your program on the fly, experiment with different coding ideas you may
	have, and rerun those lines of code instantly. Note that VS does not reset variables
	back to initial states, so you may have to manually reset values in order to get the
	results you expect.

Table 6-2 Step Operations

A Step Over operation executes the code in the current line and moves to the next. You can perform a Step Over by selecting Debug Step Over, pressing F10, or clicking the Step Over button in the toolbar.

You now know how to step through code, which is useful. However, the ability to see the values of variables and watch them change is an important skill, which you learn about in the next section.