The Debug Menu

Debugging is the process of finding errors and changing the program code to allow it to run and produce the correct output. Visual Studio includes features to help you debug your code. It allows you to pause the execution of code so that you can examine the state of variables (and if necessary modify them), and step through the program line by line. The Debug menu gives you access to VB.Net's debugging facilities. The commands available at any time will depend on the kind of file you have open, whether the program is actually running or not, the line of code in which the cursor currently resides, and whether the line has a <em>breakpoint.
        
          Continue - resumes program execution if the program is paused.
          Break All - halts the execution of all programs running in debug mode.
          Stop Debugging - halts program execution and ends the debugging session.
          Step Into - causes the debugger to execute the current line of code (if the code calls another procedure, execution moves into that procedure) .
          Step Over - causes the debugger to execute the current line of code. If the code calls another procedure, the procedure is executed in its entirety (unless a breakpoint has been set inside it) .
          Step Out - causes program execution to continue to the end of the current procedure. Execution is paused once control is returned to the block of code that called the procedure.
          QuickWatch - displays a dialog box that provides information about the code object currently selected. Within the QuickWatch dialog box, the value can be edited or added to the Watch window using the Add Watch button.

          Exceptions - displays the dialog box shown below, which allows you to determine when the debugger stops due to the occurrence of an error (either every time the selected type of error occurs, or only when there is no user-defined error handling procedure).

          Toggle Breakpoint - toggles whether the current line of code has a breakpoint. When program execution reaches a breakpoint, execution pauses.
          Delete All Breakpoints - removes all breakpoints from the application.

          The debugging tools available with Visual Basic .NET are both comprehensive and sophisticated. We will touch on debugging again, but only to deal with specific cases as we come across them. An in-depth knowledge of the debugging features, and making the best use of them, only comes with experience.