Replacement for the Debugger

[JohnH]

I have a group of SAS programmers who write a lot of complicated SAS code for simulations. They are power users of the old SAS debugger, which does not run in Enterprise Guide. (They are considering changing from SAS to a product that has a modern debugger interface.) Can anyone suggest a replacement for their debugging approach that steps through lines of code and displays the status of variables one step at a time that would work in EGuide? Is there an EGuide feature that would have Process flows run one line of code at a time and display values of variables at each step? Any other ways that people have discovered to enter some "template" code into programs to accomplish this idea?

[ChrisHemedinger]

John,

Right now there is no interactive debugging capability available using EG. Debugging happens the old fashioned way (which many people use in display manager as well): PUT statements and MLOGIC and so on.

Chris

[frisco]

Isn't a bit of wishful thinking to assume that code will never need to be debugged? I had a problem a few weeks ago where two tables weren't matching correctly because one of the columns had a leading space - this was not evident to the naked eye!!! I am trying to make a business case for EG - this sort of thing doesn't help (as in, You can do everything in a source code node that you could in the Enhanced Editor EXCEPT...)

[deleted_user]

there is an easy case to be made for E.G. (not least, lower cost per "seat") - but surely not to the entire exclusion of old SAS Display Manager which provides the interactive interface. Across a SAS customer site, many business analysts will praise the effectiveness of E.G. and a few techies will always have a need for DM on both desktop and (every) server.

PeterC

[frisco]

But my point is that our user group is accustomed to the Program Editor Environment and they are reluctant to give it up and use any difference as something they are giving up without getting anything in return. Certainly in a client-server environment, EG wins "hands-down" but try proving that to someone who has a previous version of SAS running on their desktop. Harder than you might think. Are there plans to include the debugger in a future release of EG? I certainly hope so.