Programming iOS 4

Debugging

Debugging is the art of figuring out what’s wrong with the behavior of your app as it runs. I divide this art into two main techniques: caveman debugging and pausing your running app.

Caveman Debugging

Caveman debugging consists of altering your code, usually temporarily, typically by adding code to dump informative messages into the console.

Note

To see the console as a full window, open a second project window or tab, show the Debug pane (View → Show Debug Area), and slide the top of the Debug pane all the way up to cover the editor. Eliminate the Navigator and Organizer panes, and the variables list. Now this window or tab contains nothing but the console. Switch to this window or tab when you want to read the console, but don’t run or stop while viewing it, as doing so may cause the Debug pane to close or change size.

The standard command for sending a message to the console is NSLog. It’s a C function, and it takes an NSString which operates as a format string, followed by the format arguments.

A format string is a string (here, an NSString) containing symbols called format specifiers, for which values (the format arguments) will be substituted at runtime. All format specifiers begin with a percent sign (%), so the only way to enter a literal percent sign in a format string is as a double percent sign (%%). The character(s) following the percent sign specify the type of value that will be supplied at runtime. The most common format specifiers are %@ (an object reference), ...