Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Cust.FirstName == Jean Cust.FirstName = Jean

172Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: A Beginner’s Guide

4.Next, set a breakpoint on the if statement, right-click the breakpoint, and set the condition as follows:

C#:

cust.FirstName == "Jean"

VB:

cust.FirstName = "Jean"

The goal here is to see what happens when the if statement finds the record matching the searchName. At this point, we’re assuming that Jean does exist in the data. Working with a small program, you can use windows such as Autos, Locals, or Watch to find this record. However, many real-world scenarios will give you a list with many more records. Therefore, rather than waste time drilling down through dozens of records, use the VS debugger to help find the record quickly. Keep in mind that all the best plans don’t always work out, as you’ll soon see, but the primary point is taking the most productive step first. Setting a conditional breakpoint demonstrates how you can set conditions that can avoid eating up time caused by stepping through loops.

5.Press F5 to run the program. You expect to hit the breakpoint, but that won’t happen. Confusing? We know that there isn’t anything wrong with the logic, because the if statement condition is a simple equality operator. Perhaps we’ve looked in the database or whatever source the data came from, but it’s given in this scenario that Jean is definitely in the data. However, this illustrates a common problem where the quality of data you work with is less than desired.

6.This time, change the breakpoint condition on the if statement as follows and re-run the program:

C#:

cust.FirstName.Contains("Jean")

VB:

cust.FirstName.Contains("Jean")

Remember, we suspect bad data, so the call to Contains on the string assumes that there might be some extraneous white space or other characters around the name in the data. Hover over cust.FirstName or look at cust in one of the debug windows to verify it is the record you are looking for. This breakpoint will pause on any records that contain the sequence of characters “Jean”, such as Jean-Claude. So, you might have multiple matches that aren’t what you want. The benefit is that the number of records you must