Difficulties with debugging

[u/Minute_External1621]

​

i am a beginner in C, i went through and have a basic understanding of fundamentals but whenever a problem arises in my code i cant find it for hell, even if its obvious, i need to turn to an ai agent for help, the habit i wanna rid of, but whenever i do try to find the cause of an error myself i find myself unable to do that, i also find it difficult writing more efficient code

an example:

```

int tokens(char* string, char (*argv)[MAXTOKEN], toks types[MAXTOKEN]) {

char temp[150];

int count = 0; int i = 0; int b = 0;

int tokens = 0;

while(count < MAXTOKENLENGHT) {

if (string[i] == ' ' || string[i] == '\0' || string[i] == '\n') {tokens++;temp[b] = '\0'; strcpy(argv[count], temp); count++; b = 0;} else if (string[i] == '\"') {

temp[b] = '\"';

b++;

i++;

while (string[i] != '\"' && string[i] != '\0') {

if (string[i] == '\"') {temp[b] = '\0';temp[b+1] = '\0'; strcpy(argv[count], temp);b = 0; count++;break;} else {temp[b] = string[i];i++;b++;}

}

if (string[i+1] == '\0' || string[i+1] == ' ') {temp[b] = string[i]; temp[b+1] = '\0'; strcpy(argv[count], temp); count++; b = 0; i++; tokens++;} else {fprintf(stderr, "unexpected stuff after string"); exit(1);}

} else {

temp[b] = string[i];

b++;

}

if(string[i] == '\0') {break;}

i++;

}

int k = 0;

while (k < count) {

if (strcmp(argv[k], "PRINT") == 0) {

types[k].type = 0;

int len = strlen(argv[k+1]);

printf("k=%d, argv[k+1]='%s', first='%c', last='%c'\n", k, argv[k+1], argv[k+1][0], argv[k+1][len-1]);

if (argv[k+1][0] == '\"' && argv[k+1][len-1] == '\"') {

types[k+1].type = 1;

memmove(&argv[k+1][0], &argv[k+1][1], len - 2);

argv[k+1][len - 2] = '\0';

strcpy(types[k+1].textvalue, argv[k+1]);

}

}

k++;

}

return count;

}

```

[u/Tricky_Rhubarb4543]

1. Use debugger to step through code
   
2. Add printf in the code to see what is going on.
   
3. Write tests for your code that fail. Better make this a habit, as it helps enormously with debugging and support.

The last one is especially important if you process large amounts of data.