I use the Zend IDE at work, and honestly I love just about everything about it except the price. The setup can be tricky, but I'm an IT guy so it didn't take weeks, just an hour or two with our company server. :-) Having used both the real time debugger and print-method (sometimes fancily called instrumentation), I can say that both are useful, and both are different things. I currently have hefty debugging facilities built into the CMS at work for print-style debugging, in addition to making heavy use of the real time debugger in Zend. I'm watching this thread closely myself, as I'd love something to use at home (on Linux) that doesn't cost what Zend does. :-) Currently I use PHPeclipse, but it is frankly not that good (the code assistance feature is rudimentary at best), and I've not setup the debugger yet. That, and Eclipse itself is just a dog slow memory hog. On Monday 21 August 2006 01:47, Dave M G wrote: > Paul, Robert, > > Thank you for replying and for your recomendations. > > While looking into PHP debuggers, I've often come across mention of > simply using functions like var_dump() and print_r(). > > But unless I misunderstand the concept, one has to be always writing > these commands into the code, see what they do, and then take them out > again when you actually want the code to run as you intend it to be seen. > > And I don't see how you can do things like watch variables or set break > points. Again, unless I don't see it, to watch a variable through many > steps of a script, you'd have to place a var_dump() at each juncture, > run the whole script, and pick through the output afterwards. If you > have arrays which many elements - $_SERVER usually has about 30 or more > - that could be quite a lot of text dumped to the screen. > > While I can see that this approach would work, it also seems to me to > involve much more manual labour. > > In the end, it may just be a personal thing. I'm much more of a graphics > guy who wants to do some more stuff with his web pages than a hard core > coder. I prefer a more GUI approach to development. > > Zend didn't really wow me. It took weeks of back and forth with their > support to finally get it up to speed. I'll give them credit for having > very friendly and responsive support staff. But I would have much rather > not needed to use their support so much. > > But I'd rather that then have to have to build my own set of error > handlers, which would themselves need constant tweaking, especially as > I'm a newbie. > > -- > Dave M G > Ubuntu 6.06 LTS > Kernel 2.6.17.7 > Pentium D Dual Core Processor > PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2 -- Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 larry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ICQ: 6817012 "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
