Best Practice for Debugging Code

Question

Hi!
I am new to development in Crystal.  What method do you recommend to verify my formulas are doing what I expect?  For example, in other environments I would print or prompt the result. 
What is the best approach in Crystal?
Any help you can provide will be appreciated.

Answer 1

It really depends on what you're trying to achieve.  If it's simply seeing if the calculation is right, just drop the field in the appropriate format and have it printed (or add a new format for this purpose that you can suppress or display).
If a formula comes up with a value and you can't figure out why, my approach has been to add the following code to the formula in question (basic syntax):
dim debug as number
debug = debug / debug
This will cause a divide by zero error, which will then cause Crystal to pull up the formula.  On the left of the window, all fields and variables used in the formula are displayed with their current value.  (You need to use the "debug" variable because Crystal Designer will give a syntatical divide by zero error if you code "formula = 1 / 0"...)
As written, the breakpoint will hit on the first iteration of the formula.  You can cause the "breakpoint" to happen on later iterations by using something like:
global dbgcnt as number
dim debug as number
dbgcnt = dbgcnt + 1
if dbgcnt = 5 then
  debug = debug / debug
end if
where the "5" is the iteration number that you want it to break on.
If anyone has a better way to "set a breakpoint", I'd love to hear it!  (Ah ha!  A great idea for the Suggestions thread.  Going there now!)
HTH,
Carl