debugtools 0.2.0

debugtools — Easily print useful debugging information

This package provides a handful of functions you can use to print debugging information. There are basically two things that are useful about these functions. First, they’re only one or two letters each, so you can type them really quickly while debugging. Second, they append the name of the calling function to whatever you’re printing, so you can easily see where each message came from (and you don’t have to hunt down print statements once you finish debugging).

Installation

You can install debugtools using pip:

$ pip install debugtools

Usage

I typically the following import at the beginning of any file that I’m likely to debug:

from debugtools import p, pp, pv

The p() function behaves just like print(), except it appends the name of the calling function to whatever you’re printing. I often use it with no arguments, just to see if a function is being called or not.

The pp() function is to pprint.pprint() as p() is to print(). The pv() function calls pp() with the dictionary of variables in the calling scope, so it’s a good way to see what variables are defined in the function you’re debugging.