Conditional Debugging

Script Debugger
#1

I was just reading about the commands halt, pause, and execute in the SD AppleScript dictionary. I want to execute script One.scpt and conditionally pause at a certain point. I am running the script from another script, using the command

execute POSIX file "..."

I can’t quite untangle the information contained in SD’s AS dictionary definitions for execute, pause, and halt; the example provided in the definition for execute, and the information in How to debug my Script Library. I would really appreciate instructions and an example to show how I could run a script and execute a pause command inside an if statement in such a way that control is returned to SD for inspecting variables and maybe even single-stepping.

#2

I should have clarified that running from another script was just one attempt to make this work. I really don’t need that — happy to put the pause inside the script I am actually running.

I think the thing that is tripping me up most is what the object of the pause command should be when running inside the tell of another application.

#3

Another thing: I realize I can accomplish what I want with something like

if …break-condition… then
    true

and putting a breakpoint on the true statement. Maybe this is as good as anything, but there are some differences between this and pause, in particular the fact that pause should pause even if Break on Breakpoints is turned off. (For example, maybe I have a lot of other breakpoints and want to skip all of them until I get to the pause.)

#4

Script Debugger supports conditional breakpoints. This is a breakpoint which pauses only when its when expression evaluates to true, false, an error or no error.

Screen Shot 2016-10-15 at 6.31.17 PM.png2304×1438 553 KB

double-click on the breakpoint indicator to summon the breakpoint editor, or expand the breakpoint in the Breakpoints inspector. There are lots of other options you can use.

The pause scripting command isn’t suitable for solving this kind of problem.

#5

Made sense that it would.

Glad you clarified the inappropriateness of the pause command so I don’t go down that path. (How would that be used?)

I asked because I couldn’t find it in the excellent SD Help under Breakpoints. I somehow missed the last line on the page, “Conditions and Actions”. Sorry.