Runs Fine In Debugger

[Wesley Brown]

Greetings All,

I am writing a program that simulates the operations of a gasoline pump. One of the threads
monitors the serial port for commands sent from the master control unit located inside of the
service station. One of the commands received and acted on by my program is a 'Price Change'
command.

My program performs as intended (i.e. prices change) only when running under the debugger . . .
but not when executing directly from the HD or the PowerBasic Compiler window. I searched the
forum (I was already using #Register None) but can't find anything related to this.

I thought I'd see if anyone could offer up a general suggestion or two before I posted code.
(over 1000 lines)

As always, any and all help is very much appreciated

Wesley Brown

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[Tom Hanlin]

Running under the debugger turns off register variables but, if you're
already using #REGISTER NONE, that shouldn't make any difference. The
other major difference is speed: your programs run slower under the
debugger. This suggests that you might have some sort of synchronization
issue. I'd also be inclined to suspect something like a missing message
loop.

------------------
Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Wesley Brown]

I agree with you Tom that the only other difference should be speed. But, I think that there
are other differences as well.

In a fit of aggravation I commented out 98% of the program, leaving only enough for the GUI
to be displayed. I then began uncommenting sections of code in an attempt to find the
offending part. Everything was fine until the last line of this section was uncommented:

Stat(PAddrNum,29) = Val(Mid$(BytesIn,4,1))
Stat(PAddrNum,30) = Val(Mid$(BytesIn,5,1)) * 1000 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,6,1)) * 100 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,7,1)) * 10 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,8,1))
Stat (PAddrNum,Stat(PAddrNum,29)) = Stat(PAddrNum,30)

Additional Info: Stat () As Long
PAddrNum As Integer
Dim Stat (16,35)

I fixed the problem by substituting Temp01 for Stat(PAddrNum,29), and Temp02 for
Stat(PAddrNum,30) as follows: (note: Temp01 & Temp02 are Integers)

Temp01 = Val(Mid$(BytesIn,4,1))
Temp02 = Val(Mid$(BytesIn,5,1)) * 1000 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,6,1)) * 100 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,7,1)) * 10 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,8,1))
Stat(PAddrNum,Temp01) = Temp02

This is my very first powerbasic program and so I don't have a clue as to why the original
code would execute fine from the debugger but not the compiler window. But . . . since I'm
trying to learn PowerBasic I'd like to know.

Any ideas and/or constructive criticism would be much appreciated.

Wesley Brown

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[This message has been edited by Wesley Brown (edited January 26, 2001).]

[Peter Scheutz]

Originally posted by Wesley Brown:
Greetings All,


My program performs as intended (i.e. prices change) only when running under the debugger . . .
but not when executing directly from the HD or the PowerBasic Compiler window. I searched the
forum (I was already using #Register None) but can't find anything related to this.

I thought I'd see if anyone could offer up a general suggestion or two before I posted code.
(over 1000 lines)

As always, any and all help is very much appreciated

Wesley Brown

I have had several cases where a program would run only when the #DEBUG ERROR ON option was set.
Since the debugger turns this option on, it might be related.

The error has was (almost) always due to bad code on my part. As I remember it, usually due to array out of bounds.
There was one case however where Dword aligning a UDT fixed the problem. This was strange, because the code was not using pointers to access the UDT.

--
Best Regards
Peter Scheutz




------------------

[Michael Mattias]

This has nothing to do with your problem, but...

Temp02 = Val(Mid$(BytesIn,5,1)) * 1000 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,6,1)) * 100 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,7,1)) * 10 + _
Val(Mid$(BytesIn,8,1))

can be replaced with

Temp02 = VAL (MID$(BytesIn,5,4))

MCM

[Lance Edmonds]

Wesley, it still looks possible that your code is accessing the array outside it's bounds, however, since we have no clues as to the runtime values of those array elements we cannot tell from where we sit.

Therefore, if you can post the code we can take a look and hopefully locate the exact cause of your problem, simply being able to duplicate your problem. Unless we can do this, we'll likely to just be guessing as causes and solutions which is not very efficient.

Thanks!




------------------
Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>