Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours

By James Foxall and Wendy Haro-Chun

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Audience and Organization
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Onward and Upward!
  • Part I. The Visual Studio Environment
  • Hour 1. A C# Programming Tour
  • Hour 2. Navigating C#
  • Hour 3. Understanding Objects and Collections
  • Hour 4. Understanding Events
  • Part II. Building a User Interface
  • Hour 5. Building FormsPart I
  • Hour 6. Building FormsPart II
  • Hour 7. Working with the Traditional Controls
  • Hour 8. Advanced Controls
  • Hour 9. Adding Menus and Toolbars to Forms
  • Hour 10. Drawing and Printing
  • Part III. Making Things HappenProgramming!
  • Hour 11. Creating and Calling Methods
  • Hour 12. Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays
  • Hour 13. Performing Arithmetic, String Manipulation, and Date/Time Adjustments
  • Hour 14. Making Decisions in C# Code
  • Hour 15. Looping for Efficiency
  • Hour 16. Debugging Your Code
    • Adding Comments to Your Code
    • Identifying the Two Basic Types of Errors
    • Using C#'s Debugging Tools
    • Writing an Error Handler Using try...catch...finally
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 17. Designing Objects Using Classes
  • Hour 18. Interacting with Users
  • Part IV. Working with Data
  • Hour 19. Performing File Operations
  • Hour 20. Controlling Other Applications Using Automation
  • Hour 21. Working with a Database
  • Part V. Deploying Solutions and Beyond
  • Hour 22. Deploying a Solution
  • Hour 23. Introduction to Web Development
  • Hour 24. The 10,000-Foot View
  • Appendix A. Answers to Quizzes/Exercises

Hour 16. Debugging Your Code

No one writes perfect code. You're most certainly familiar with those problems that prevent code from executing properly—they're called bugs. Being new to C#, your code will probably contain a fair number of bugs. As you gain proficiency, the number of bugs in your code will decrease, but they will never disappear entirely. Debugging is a skill and an art. This book can't teach you how to debug every possible build or runtime error you may encounter; however, in this hour you will learn the basic skills necessary to trace and correct most bugs in your code.

The highlights of this hour include the following:

• Adding comments to your code
• Identifying the two basic types of errors
• Working with break points
• Using the Command window
• Using the Output window
• Creating a structured error handler

Before proceeding, create a new Windows Application project named Debugging Example. Change the name of the default form to fclsDebuggingExample, set its Text property to Debugging Example, and change the Main() entry point of the project to reference fclsDebuggingExample instead of Form1.

Add a new text box to the form by double-clicking the TextBox item in the toolbox. Set the text box's properties as follows:

Next, add a new button to the form by double-clicking the Button item in the toolbox, and then set its properties as follows:

Your form should now look like the one shown in Figure 16.1.

Figure 16.1 This simple interface will help teach you debugging techniques.

All this little project will do is divide 100 by whatever is entered into the text box. As you write the code to accomplish this, various bugs will be introduced (on purpose), and you'll learn to correct them. Save your project now by clicking the Save All button on the toolbar.

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