Practical tips debugging deep recursion?

Question

I\'m working on a board game algorithm where a large tree is traversed using recursion, however, it\'s not behaving as expected. How do I handle this and what are you experience

Answer 1

Since you say that the traversal is not working as expected, I assume you have some idea of where things may go wrong. Then inspect the code to verify that you have not overlooked something basic.

After that I suggest you set up some simple unit tests. If they pass, then keep adding tests until they fail. If they fail, then reduce the tests until they either pass or are as simple as they can be. That should help you pinpoint the problems.

If you want to debug as well, I suggest you employ conditional breakpoints. Visual Studio lets you modify breakpoints, so you can set conditions on when the breakpoint should be triggered. That can reduce the number of iterations you need to look at.