Debugging fixes broken function

Twice already (once with a function, once with with a procedure) I had some code that wouldn't work. After firing up a debugger it started to work.

On the procedure, I remember it working yesterday. I do not know what happened, but when I came in the next morning it was not working. So, I copied and pasted the CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE text into SQL*PLUS that I had elsewhere, and it was still broken. I then stepped through the procedure (without compile debug) and it worked.

Just now, it happened with a function. The function wasn't working correctly, so I debugged it. The debugger kept exiting on a certain line (even though the function still finished executing, as a variable did get set later). Anyway, I ended up commenting and uncommenting lines. When I got to the point where I commented all the lines, and then uncommented them, I found the offending line. Without changing anything, I commented the line out again and uncommented all the other lines. The function ran succesfully. I then uncommented the line, and it worked. The sample data I used to call the function was the same each time, I did not change the data in the calling porocedure.

I'm trying to pinpoint the problem, so I can avoid it in the future. Any insifghts?

Brian Received on Wed Feb 14 2001 - 16:56:24 CST