Slides: Debugging Practice

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# Debugging Practice
## CSC 213 – September  5, 2025

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# Agenda for Today
1. Department Events
2. Upcoming Work
3. C Practice
4. Debugging
5. Wrap Up

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# Department Events

## Conversation in the Humanities: A Humanistic Approach to Generative AI
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  Friday, September 5th at 4:30pm in HSSC S1325
]

## CS Table: Developer Experience with AI Coding Assistants
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  Tuesday, September 9th at noon in JRC 224C  
]

*To receive 0.25% extra credit, send an email to let me know you attended no more than 48 hours after the event.*

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# Upcoming Work

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# Assignment 1: Ngram Generator

**Due:** Monday, September 8th by 11:59pm

## Questions
**Getting the starter code produces a `git` error. What should I do?**  
The `git` error will print a command you should run first, then you can retry.
Or run this command first and `git` should stop complaining:
```
git config --global --add safe.directory /home/curtsinger/csc213
```

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# C Practice

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# C Practice: The Problem
We are going to write a C program called `charsort` together as a class (I will drive).
The program should do the following:

1. The program must accept exactly one string as a command line argument.
2. The output should be all of the letters in the input string, but printed in sorted order.

For example:
```shell
$ ./charsort hello
ehllo
```

Take a minute to consider how you might approach this problem and what you might need to look up to implement your approach.

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# C Practice: Live Coding

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# C Practice: Style Guide
Good C code should do the following:

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- Indent every block of code
- Always use curly braces around blocks
- Write explanatory comments, with at least one by each block of code
- Cite resources in comments next to the relevant code
- Use descriptive variable names
- Use whitespace to break code into logical chunks
- Validate user input
- Print helpful error messages
]

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- Use standard library functions instead of re-implementing them.
- Try to follow modern C conventions
- Check return values from library functions
- Fix code that generates compiler warnings
- Use resources, and cite them appropriately
- Use local memory whenever possible (instead of calling `malloc`)
- Free allocated memory when you are done with it
]

**Is this list missing anything?**

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# Debugging

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# Discussion: Debugger Commands
For each `gdb` command below: what does it do, and when would you use it?
- `start`
- `continue`
- `break`
- `watch`
- `step`
- `next`

*Start by thinking of answers on your own. I will let you know when to start discussion.*

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# Debugging Exercise

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# Wrap Up

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# Reminders

## Assignment
The Ngram Generator assignment is due on Monday evening.
Start early so you have time to get stuck.

## Reading

- **The Abstraction: The Processes** (OSTEP, Chapter 4)
              
            
              
- **Interlude: Process API** (OSTEP, Chapter 5)
              
            
              
- **Mechanism: Limited Direct Execution** (OSTEP, Chapter 6)