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Breakpoint fails on Comment - bug?


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ME Pro seems to ignore breakpoints set on a Comment command. The macro goes sailing cheerfully past it.

What exactly is a "breakpoint" on a "Comment command"?

 

I may be misunderstanding your question... Comment commands in ME Pro are essentially just a Remark command from ME3. Its only function, as far as I'm aware, is to give Macro programmers insight about what the following section of Macro code does.

 

If I'm misunderstanding your question (which I have no doubt is the case), please clarify it for me and I'll be happy to try to duplicate your results.

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When running the debugger in the scripting editor, comment lines are ignored as they are not real code. This means that the line is completely skipped and never checked for a break point.

 

Thanks for the fast reply, Jason. But that seems a disappointing backward step to me. Comments summarising the purpose of the following section are natural places for a breakpoint. That's where I've always tended to put mine. As I said, it works fine in ME 3, so why not ME Pro?

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

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What exactly is a "breakpoint" on a "Comment command"?

 

I may be misunderstanding your question... Comment commands in ME Pro are essentially just a Remark command from ME3. Its only function, as far as I'm aware, is to give Macro programmers insight about what the following section of Macro code does.

 

If I'm misunderstanding your question (which I have no doubt is the case), please clarify it for me and I'll be happy to try to duplicate your results.

 

Steve,

 

As per my reply to Jason, I typically place a breakpoint on a Comment line (Remark in ME3). That introduces the next section. So after hitting F9 the macro should stop right at the end of the previous section. Very helpful for debugging. That's what happens in ME 3. But in ME Pro it doesn't stop.

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

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Steve,

 

As per my reply to Jason, I typically place a breakpoint on a Comment line (Remark in ME3). That introduces the next section. So after hitting F9 the macro should stop right at the end of the previous section. Very helpful for debugging. That's what happens in ME 3. But in ME Pro it doesn't stop.

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

As soon as I read Jason's reply I understood exactly what you were trying to do. I must have had something wrong with my brain when I read your original post. :)

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The decision was made to skip comments to help optimize the macro. Less lines = less execution time.

 

Then that was a bad decision IMO. And I find it hard to believe that testing for a breakpoint on a Comment could slow down a macro significantly! Are you really saying that macros in ME Pro run significantly faster on average than they did in ME 3, which does include Comments in its breakpoint checks? My tests so far don't support that. What speed contribution are you saying has resulted from removing the facilty to test Comments for a breakpoint?

 

I've now formally reported it as a bug, because it's functionality I expected to see and it's not working.

 

As well as listing all the new features of ME Pro, wouldn't it be fair of ISS to also list the features you've removed from the previous version?

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

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I was thinking on this and I believe my reason for wanting to add breakpoints to comments is ignorance. When I'm flying fast I can never remember if the break point causes MEP to stop before or execute that command. Since I usually head my sections with comments I would try to use them so I didn't have to think about it. So if the performance improvement is significant I suggest that MEP not process comments but it should not allow the user to tag a comment. And if you were getting really tricky you might add a note in the warning for my small brain to remind me that breakpoints stop the execution prior to the command tagged as a breakpoint. Just a thought.

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