Okuzeka
Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Step through

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

phrasal verbCommon term

In software engineering, step through means: To run code one line or instruction at a time in a debugger, checking what happens after each step.

In Turkish: adım adım ilerlemek, satır satır izlemek

How it is used

Used with debuggers and breakpoints: 'step through the function', 'step through it line by line'. Related commands are 'step over' (run a function call as one step), 'step into' (go inside it) and 'step out'. In meetings, the similar 'walk through' means explaining something step by step.

Example sentences

  1. I stepped through the loop and saw that the counter was never reset.

  2. Set a breakpoint here and step through the parser with the failing input.

Common collocations

  • step through the code
  • step through line by line
  • step over
  • step into
  • debuggerA tool that lets you pause a running program, go through it line by line and look at the values of variables to find out why it misbehaves.
  • breakpointA 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.
  • 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.
  • stack traceA report printed when an error happens, listing the chain of function calls that led to it, with file names and line numbers.

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: