VIPS: a visual debugger for list structures

A description is given of VIPS, a visual debugging system which makes it easy to debug programs by visually displaying the program execution from various aspects using multiple windows. VIPS automatically acquires data type information from the program to be debugged and rapidly displays data structures. The current version of VIPS aims at list structures, which are the most difficult type of data structures for debugging. A preliminary evaluation shows that VIPS enables a user to find bugs in about 30% less time using about 25% fewer debugging commands compared with a conventional debugging tool.<
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