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Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Breakpoint

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈbreɪkpɔɪnt/nounCommon term

In software engineering, breakpoint means: A marker you put on a line of code so that the program pauses there while it runs, letting you inspect variables and step through the code.

In Turkish: kesme noktası, durma noktası

How it is used

You set, hit and remove breakpoints in an IDE or in the browser's developer tools. A 'conditional breakpoint' stops only when a condition is true. Many developers still use print statements instead.

Example sentences

  1. Set a breakpoint inside the loop and check what the total is on each pass.

  2. The breakpoint never gets hit, so this code path isn't running at all.

Common collocations

  • set a breakpoint
  • hit a breakpoint
  • conditional breakpoint
  • remove all breakpoints
  • debugTo search for the cause of a problem in a program and remove it, often by running the code step by step and checking values.
  • IDEShort for integrated development environment: an application for writing code that brings together an editor, a debugger, search and other tools in one place.
  • stack traceA report printed when an error happens, listing the chain of function calls that led to it, with file names and line numbers.
  • variableA name in a program that stores a value, such as a number, text or list, so that the code can use or change that value later.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

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