Example: debugging

Techniques for debugging Quadrate programs.

Stack debugging

Use the built-in debug instructions to inspect stack state:

fn main() {
    1 2 3
    prints    // 1 2 3 (print entire stack, non-destructive)
    printsv   // int:1 int:2 int:3 (with type info)
    printv    // int:3 (print and pop top value)
    prints    // 1 2
    drop drop
}

GDB debugging

Quadrate supports source-level debugging with GDB. Compile with -g to include debug symbols:

quadc -g -o myprogram myprogram.qd
gdb ./myprogram

Setting breakpoints

Break at a specific line in your .qd source:

(gdb) break myprogram.qd:10
(gdb) run

Inspecting the stack

Use the runtime debug helper to print the full stack:

(gdb) call (void)qd_debug_print_stack(ctx)
(gdb) print qd_context_stack_size(ctx)

For low-level inspection, the internal stack structure is also accessible:

(gdb) print ctx->st->size
(gdb) print ctx->st->data[0]

Stepping through code

Standard GDB commands work with Quadrate source files:

(gdb) next       # Step over
(gdb) step       # Step into
(gdb) continue   # Resume execution
(gdb) list       # Show source around current line

Compiler diagnostics

Dump tokens

See how the lexer tokenizes your source:

quadc --dump-tokens myprogram.qd

Dump AST

See the parsed abstract syntax tree:

quadc --dump-ast myprogram.qd

Dump LLVM IR

Inspect the generated LLVM intermediate representation:

quadc --dump-ir myprogram.qd

Verbose compilation

Show detailed compilation information:

quadc --verbose myprogram.qd